


Crash Standing

by phaetonschariot



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Amnesia, Gen, Human Experimentation, Hydra, M/M, PTSD, Slow Burn, Winged Sam
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-14
Updated: 2017-03-30
Packaged: 2018-10-04 21:45:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 26,967
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10290821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phaetonschariot/pseuds/phaetonschariot
Summary: The Winter Soldier project was not the last of its kind. Several months after the collapse of SHIELD, Bucky wants to come in from the cold, and he's bringing the Falcon with him.





	1. Prologue / Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The Sam/Bucky is pretty minor in itself and features in the later chapters. I have two follow-ups planned (a short one and a longer one) that will be Steve/Sam/Bucky. Violence warning is for the whole fic, not individual chapters, and is usually quite short snippets.

Steve finally tracks Bucky down in Vienna.

*

He's— not well. Not that Steve was expecting him to be. He's tried not to expect anything at all, though daydreams and nightmares have crept intrusively into his mind far, far too often in the long months of his search. In some ways that's good, because there was always the quiet dread that he wouldn't find Bucky at all, just the shell of his body housing a highly skilled assassin. In comparison the slightly insane laugh he comes out with when telling Steve about the newspaper he used to wear in his shoes is almost a relief. At least he remembers _something_.

First things first. He gets a hotel room and a frankly ludicrous amount of food even for two super-soldiers, trying to make sure there's a good variety because he isn't sure whether Bucky's thin because he can't eat much or can't afford to eat much. He'll have to get in touch with Tony soon, see if he can get them transport back to the US (he flew commercial on the way to Europe, but it's pretty clear that that's not going to be an option for the return trip). That can wait, though. Right now he needs to evaluate his mental state, decide how much of a security risk he is, figure out what kind of treatment he might need, start debriefing about the anti-Hydra activity Steve's been tracking him by. Catch up.

Mostly, he just doesn't want to share this yet.

*

Bucky seems to like fruit, which Steve had expected. The sheer availability of it is one of the better things about the future in his opinion. He's bad at facial expressions, which would make it hard to tell when he's joking if he ever showed signs of a sense of humour, and sometimes he zones out for several seconds at a time, eyes going dull and unfocused until he pulls himself back from wherever he's going in his head. Noises make him startle and he has a bit of a nervous tic when he's upset about something, touching the objects immediately around him in a quick sequence, left to right, as though checking their solidity.

Some of his recitations of assaults on Hydra bases don't make sense. He leaves pieces out, can't explain how some security systems are bypassed or how he pinned down guards or patrols. When Steve tries to clarify he does the zoning out thing then says he doesn't know. It's unnerving.

Sometimes he seems to remember easily; other times it's like he's stuck behind a wall that he can't climb over, and if Steve doesn't change the subject he gets distressed and worked up, frustrated at his failures. He rarely does anything to maintain himself without being prompted - eating, drinking, showering, sleeping. Security checks, on the other hand, he performs regularly no matter what Steve says and despite them being three floors up. Still, on day three Steve finds him turning a box of playing cards over and over in his hands, staring at it like he's trying to figure something out, and when he asks, "Wanna play gin rummy?" Bucky's frown melts.

After two games he makes a hesitant attempt to match Steve's light banter. 

Sometime later he issues a sharp, harsh sound that Steve realises is a laugh.

*

The window crashes in.

Steve's first thought is, _That's going to be expensive._ His second is to wonder when he’d pulled out his gun, already taking aim.

"останавливать!" Bucky, speaking Russian. Logically it makes sense, but it's still a shock to the system. He'd never been any good at languages before, knew enough German and French and Italian to get by, but Russian hadn't really been on their radar. Between that, the noise, the shards of glass flying everywhere, the sudden attack from a direction he entirely wasn't expecting, instinct kicks in before thought and he's already let off two shots before he realises that the assailant has pulled up sharply at Bucky's command.

That tone of voice, it was definitely a command. It's not a tone he's heard even once in the almost-week they've been here.

He hears metal hitting metal, ping, ping. Bullets hitting something like a shield and falling to the floor. He takes in a dark figure, a black man wrapped in vertical strips of gunmetal grey, and he has to look for a second or two to realise those are metal-feathered _wings_ curled around to protect him. He's frozen in place, staring at Bucky with wide eyes. Steve has no idea how to react.

"он мой друг," Bucky continues, calmer now, more confident than the halting way he often speaks when he's talking about anything other than his Hydra missions. Then, in English, "This is Steve."

The man flicks his gaze to Steve and they lock eyes, sizing each other up silently. He looks as ragged as Bucky does, hair in tight and tangling curls, and they have the same half-dead stare. Whatever he sees must be acceptable, or at least tolerable, because after a few tense moments the wings start curling back and collapsing in on themselves until they only protrude two or three feet on each side. With how awkward and bulky it still looks Steve suspects they retract much further, but given the guy has a gun in each hand and just kicked in their hotel window it's enough of a surprise that he's standing down at all.

He doesn't say anything, or holster the guns, and the silence stretches on until Steve decides that if anyone's going to break the stalemate it's going to have to be him.

"Want something to eat?"

*

"Prague," Bucky says once the hostility and wariness have dropped to lower levels. His friend seems to have slightly more varied tastes, but it's hard to tell - he's more hesitant about taking anything, glancing up at Steve first every time he reaches out and Bucky most of the rest of the time. He hasn't eaten anything like a full meal's worth, even for a normal human. "They had a field outpost."

Steve remembers it. It hadn't been much - the remnants of what had been heavy security, the kind that keeps people from getting _out_ as much as from getting _in_. There had been empty cryo pods, the nightmarish chair that he's come to recognise, several computers, all smashed into pieces. He'd counted seven bodies. Five guards. Two scientists. He'd assumed it was somewhere they'd kept the Winter Soldier once. Apparently he'd assumed wrongly.

"Do you know your name?" Steve asks the man. No way to know how long they've had him, but if his treatment has been anything like Bucky's…

Instead of answering he just looks at Bucky again, who shakes his head once, minutely. "сокол. It's. Like a hunting bird. Falcon."

"Falcon. Okay." He keeps his tone neutral and doesn't comment on the man's silence. He's trying not to make too many guesses about his state, physical _or_ mental, until he has more information. Right now he's just trying to figure out how much this will affect his plans. He was thinking about calling Tony tomorrow and he decides now that it's a good idea. Him and Bucky, that was at least a semi-stable situation. They have a history and he can probably take him well enough if he accidentally sets him off somehow. Two of them is another matter entirely. 

So. Get them somewhere secure. Get some professionals in. See if they can figure out who this new guy is and where - and _when_ \- he comes from.

Simple.

 

***

 

"How’s Europe been?" The words are the first sign of Natasha's presence (in the room, in the facility, on the continent), and Steve barely manages not to jerk in surprise as she drops onto the couch next to him. She's like a cat, right down to the safe assumption that she has multiple hidden weapons that could come out at any time. "Get plenty of selfies standing in front of tourist attractions?"

"Do Hydra bases count?" He sits back to look at her; until now he'd been leaning forward, elbows on knees and chin resting on his clasped hands as he drifted tiredly. Tony had said 'uh huh' and 'yeah' and 'alright' a lot and then gotten off the line and sent them a damn jet. They'd gotten back to New York the previous morning and promptly been thrown into a long day and a half of information sharing over secure lines, establishing Bucky and Falcon in a very secure apartment on an otherwise empty floor while making sure they show no sign that it's too similar to Hydra's captivity, deciding who to get hold of that was both qualified and trustworthy, and catching up on anything he'd missed. Combined with the jet lag, it isn't much of a surprise that the first chance he'd gotten to rest his mind had decided to just take a complete break. 

Just. It's. They have a couple of traumatised, brainwashed assassins hidden in Stark Tower right in the middle of New York city, and one of them's his best friend. It's a problem.

Natasha pokes him between two ribs with a sharp knuckle, the gesture strangely affectionate. "Hey. You got him. It'll be okay."

He's sure there's something wrong if Nat's being the optimist between them. But he nods as though he believes her, even if he can't quite stop the corners of his lips tugging down in a slight frown. "There could be more out there. I saw— Bucky's arm, Falcon's wings. They're practically fused into the skin. And they must have done something to the muscles, to make them strong enough to support all that extra weight. It's." He stops for a moment, trying to figure out how to phrase it. He's sitting there breathing in and out, the passage of air easy and almost silent thanks to Erskine's formula and the Vita-Ray chamber, and he's hit with a heavy sense of exhausting _unfairness_. He doesn't always like the impact the serum had on his life and he still has moments where he feels nothing more than like he's just wearing a costume, but the idea of Hydra's scientists slicing into him instead, installing metal spider legs that burrow their way deep into his body on behalf of some grotesque addition… it's not one he's enjoying.

Do they have sensation? He can't decide whether that would be better or worse, being able to feel them, like they were a natural extension of yourself.

When he looks back at Natasha her eyes seem a little softer than usual. She gets it, he guesses. Maybe something from her own past, maybe just a side effect of the spy business, the ability to get inside people's heads and understand their fears and desires. "I don't even know where to start," he confesses. The week in the hotel room had seemed— like a holiday, almost, a frozen moment outside of the reality that he can't ignore now that they're home. 

"No one expects you to fix everything yourself. Just keep talking to him, let the doctors worry about the rest."

He knows she's right, really. He just wishes it was that easy in practice. But all he says is, "Yeah," and if there's a bit of a sigh in his voice then at least she doesn't call him on it. "At least I'm going to get really good at gin rummy." 

She raises an eyebrow, and he's saved from having to explain the comment when Rhodes appears, apparently looking for him. "Cap, think we might have a lead on who the other guy is. I'm taking it to Tony if you want to come along."

Yeah, that-- He does, actually. Giving Nat a nod ("thanks" and "see you later" all in one economical movement) he follows Rhodey to the elevator.

"It was what you said Barnes was calling him that made me think of it," Rhodes explains as Steve feels the slight jarring sensation in the pit of his stomach that means they're moving. He hadn't appreciated how smooth the tower's elevators were until he'd had cause to use the ones in standard apartment buildings. "I'd heard something about Project Falcon a few years back. Knew it got to trials, but not much more. So I talked to a few buddies on the Hill until I found one who knew about it. Strictly off the record, of course."

Steve nods; he knows how those things go. Sometimes it's all about who you know, and Rhodes would be valuable for that even if he wasn't also an exemplary soldier. "I take it it was promising."

"The official name was EXO-7. They were training PJs to use jet-fuelled wing packs to get behind enemy lines, for when they couldn't risk a chopper. The tech worked fine, but they lost the last pilot within two years. He wrote down a few names for me, the ones whose bodies were never found. Hopefully one of them’s going to be our guy." 

"Who's our guy?" They'd been disgorged from the elevator while Rhodes was speaking and Tony had obviously caught the last part of it, though he barely glances up from his work. His ability to multitask has always impressed Steve. It's something he shares with Howard.

Rhodes pulls a keyboard towards him and starts typing rapidly, a holographic screen appearing in front of him as he does so with text flowing across it. "Looks like we've really only got one potential match," Rhodes notes. "Samuel Thomas Wilson, served with the 58th in Afghanistan. He was on his second tour when he went MIA back in 2010. Partner tried to bring him back, but couldn't get close enough to where he went down. That guy was killed a couple missions later too."

An image appears on the screen and Steve has to blink a couple of times to remind his eyes how to focus on it properly. It only takes a second, and it does look a lot like Falcon might, if he was several years younger with his hair clipped close to his skull. He isn't smiling, but he looks like he might be just about to. Something in his eyes. "That's him," Steve agrees, tone sombre considering that this is a _good_ thing. Knowing his name, being able to give that back to him, that can't do anything but help in regaining his identity. "Can we print out everything we have on him? He should see this."

"Yeah, give me a moment."

There's a mechanical whir as a printer somewhere behind him wakes up and starts working. He turns to find it, making his way over when he does and staring intently as though he can read the paper as it emerges upside-down. He's too focused on the sheets being spat out of the machine to keep up the conversation, collecting them into a pile that's strangely warm in his hands until no more come.

He does remember to say thanks before he leaves, at least.

*

Bucky's agitated. Not about anything in particular, or at least it doesn't seem like it, but after he lets Steve in he goes back to what looks to be an already routine security check of all the possible points of entry, hiding places, and a few other places that Steve isn't too sure _what_ relevance they have. In contrast, Falcon-- Sam-- is just… sitting, cross-legged near where an interior wall meets the huge pane glass windows that look out over the city. His wings curl forward a little as Steve walks towards him but the rest of him doesn't move a muscle until Steve crouches down in front of him, a few feet away so as not to hem him in. Even then it's just a matter of turning his head slightly to look back at him.

"We've found out who you are," Steve tells him, holding out the papers. He had a quick look before he came down to make sure there's nothing obviously upsetting, but they really don't have much information. It's mostly basic biographical details, past residences, the start of his military record, some census data.

Sam pauses and for a moment Steve is just sitting there, balancing on the balls of his feet and waiting until he finally takes them, the movement of his arm cautious, and stares at the top page. He blinks slow a couple of times as he reads and Steve finds himself staring at his eyelashes. They're longer than he'd expect. Finally he looks up again. There's a slight crease in the middle of his forehead. "Sam." Half a question.

Steve hides his surprise - this is the first time he's heard him actually speak. His voice is hoarse and husky from either disuse or overuse. The former seems more likely. He has known that they have some way of communicating, from Bucky referring to his thoughts and opinions, but until now he'd had no way of proving that they weren't just in the habit of playing elaborate games of charades.

"Is that familiar?"

His answering nod is minute, hardly a real thing before he goes back to reading, pushing the top sheet aside to get to the next. When Steve notices a few seconds later that his wings have shifted back into a more relaxed position he decides to leave him to it for now. He doesn't need someone staring at him while he processes.

The rest of the main room’s deserted. He finds Bucky in one of the bedrooms, which has had its door removed from the frame for some reason. It's now propped up in the far corner, the only way there's room for it, while the mattress and bed frame are tipped against the near wall with two of the legs removed and a third being worked on. "Did you hear?"

"Yeah, yeah, I'm not the one who's deaf, bud." For a moment he sounds like a perfect imitation of the old Bucky and Steve's chest aches a little like he's running out of air. It doesn't quite match how he looks, his movements, his long hair and prosthetic arm. "When-- How long did they have him?"

"Nearly six years, if they captured him right after his last mission. Which they probably did, he must have been pretty injured."

He's silent for a minute, focusing on what he's doing, and when he does speak again he doesn't look at Steve. He might as well be talking to the bed frame. "It… doesn't seem… Time’s hard. I don't remember much, of being there, but it feels like it was forever."

It's hard to imagine for Steve. He'd felt himself freezing to death and then woken up in a SHIELD facility in the future, nothing in between. It could have been the next day for all he'd known, if all those details hadn't been wrong. But Bucky had been taken in and out of cryofreeze over and over, had his memory wiped god knows how many times… clearly not completely, though. Now that he's away from them his brain's starting to repair what was lost. Steve's no scientist, but he guesses a sense of time is something stored far deeper in the brain than memories. He wonders if the mismatch is anything like the dissonance he still feels sometimes coming across a place that has a confusing mixture of familiar and new, where he might recognise the layout of the streets and a couple of old heritage buildings but is jarred by the neon Starbucks sign and the bright colours of a takeaway place.

He thinks it might be. Enough so that when he nods in understanding it doesn't feel patronising, anyway. "What is all this?" he asks, finally giving into curiosity.

Bucky glances up and looks around the room; he's expressionless, but the gesture is one of surprise. "Oh. Sokol’s--" He pauses, searching for a word which he apparently can't find. "Small spaces?"

"Claustrophobic."

That gets him a nod. Makes sense that he'd like open places, he supposes. He probably has good spatial awareness, and the wings seem like they extend _wide_. The base in Prague certainly couldn't have accommodated them, it was designed for humans - unmodified humans, that is. He isn't sure whether hemming him in like that would be good tactics or bad. No room to maneuvre, but Steve wouldn't want to be in between Sam and a wall if he decided to suddenly extend a strong metal wing directly at his throat.

"This would seem pretty small," he agrees; Bucky gives no response, moving on to the last remaining leg, and for a little while he's caught in fascination at the way his prosthetic hand works. It's difficult to forget that the thing was designed as a weapon, the movement of the fingers never quite as smooth as those on his real hand in a way that isn't accounted for simply by it being the left. He might have put it down to the natural limitations of technology if he hadn't seen Sam's wings. If they could do that, they certainly could have upgraded the arm to be capable of finer work than punching, gripping, firing a gun.

The quiet stretches long enough for it to be a surprise when it's broken. He'd thought Bucky was focusing as hard as it _looks_ like he is, but nothing in his work changes as he speaks. "They can fix him, right?"

It's a question he's asked himself a _lot_. This whole time, following trails and leads, he's been caught in the place between trying to remind himself that his best friend could be irretrievably broken, that he shouldn't raise his expectations too high, and trying to maintain a certain level of optimism. Hearing the same thing from a guy whose brain has practically been put through a blender a few times is a little bit haunting. "They're gonna fix both of you, Buck. Look at you. You're doing great." He doesn't mention the edginess, the focus, the hyper-vigilance that had him checking again the entry points and hiding places in an apartment in the middle of one of the most secure civilian-owned buildings in the world, because even holding down a single conversation this long without jumping between topics is a pretty good sign.

But Bucky shakes his head jerkily. "I couldn't. I. _Shit._ " That last seems to be an expression of pure frustration rather than anything physical being wrong. He hits the last leg with his metal hand, using it like a hammer to knock it out of its slot, and it lands on the floor to be a target for a baleful glare as though it had personally offended him. "I'm no good."

"Don't," Steve chokes out, anguished at the idea of him giving up before he even really starts. "Bucky. You can get better, I know it. It just might take a while. You always looked after me, remember, now it's my turn. We're gonna do this."

The corners of his mouth twist downwards and a curtain of too long hair falls over his face as though he's hiding. This is exactly what Steve had told himself he _wouldn't_ do, he realises. Optimism is one thing, dumping his emotions on him is completely different. Fuck. At this rate he's going to need a psychologist himself before he ruins everything.

"I need to eat." 

Steve takes the hit; the subject change could hardly be more abrupt and pointed if he'd planned it. "Right. Yeah, that's a good idea. Uh-- I think there's some food in the kitchen if you want to put something together, or do you want me to get something in?" Which could mean anything, in New York. There are actually food vendors and restaurants inside the tower, both open to the public on the ground floor and solely for employees, residents and authorised visitors further up. Then of course there are all the places within walking distance, which for Steve is further than most, _and_ everywhere that will deliver.

He's narrowed it down enough that he doesn't expect it to be a difficult question, but for a moment Bucky looks frozen in-- probably panic, if he's reading him right, but it's well-hidden. He grimaces a little. It might be an either/or choice, but it must be pretty obvious to Bucky that even so both options only lead to a lot more decisions. "Let's have a look," he offers, and feels a small rush of success when the tension eases out of his shoulders.

As he leads him back out to the mini-kitchenette he catches movement from Sam's corner. It immediately draws Bucky's attention, too, and he tries not to let on that he's noticed this further jumpiness. It feels a little like a reward when he looks back to Steve and asks point blank whether he's staying.

*

The last of the panic attack lingers stubbornly. It wraps itself around Sokol’s mind, dragging him down and slowing his reactions so that he isn't sure that he would have been able to take the blond man if his intentions had been hostile. But then, if they had been, he isn't sure it would have mattered. The door to get out of the apartment doesn't open for either of them when they are alone and the elevator most likely won't respond to their voices either, if they aren't supposed to get onto it. The windows are made of something strong that he isn't sure he could break. (He had not tried with his full strength, only that needed to crack standard glass of that size. If he had succeeded it would have been easier to explain the damage. It's still possible that they could escape that way, but it's not something he'd like to rely on.) Neither of them would fit through the vents even if they could get them open. If they kill a handler there's probably no way out, and no Soldat on the outside to inadvertently open an escape route.

The blond man interests him. He's not like Soldat, whose motivations are transparent and familiar. They have an obvious bond that comes from both having been created (no, not created - they had been people before, with names and families) and used as weapons, minds wiped clean repeatedly until nothing remained but the memory of pain. The blond man knows Soldat, but he doesn't know Sokol, and even if Soldat had refused to be brought in without him that doesn't require them to treat him with more than a minimal regard. He isn't sure what they gain from showing him who he was, unless it's some kind of trick.

It doesn't _feel_ like a trick. It feels like being reminded of something he'd forgotten. He'd kept getting little flashes of images as he'd read through the pages. Any time he tried to grasp them they slipped away, but they had the ring of authenticity to them.

Soldat doesn't question why Sokol wants the man to stay while they eat. Probably a good thing since Sokol can't explain it, even in words let alone the limited hand signals they've come up with when either one of them is struggling to express something. They both know several languages, but under stress they have a tendency to become frustratingly obscure.

They heat up pizza. He remembers pizza, he thinks, though he isn't sure where from. Soldat hands him his on a plate and he sits on the floor watching them as they all eat, listening to the blond man talk about how popular it is these days, and how in the thirties you only found it in the Italian ghettos and in only a couple of flavours. He eats as much as they do, folding slices in half to fit in his mouth while Sokol bites into his crust-first, letting his fingers get messy so that the last morsels still have plenty of flavour. For some reason that just… feels normal.

By the time he's done he's back in his body enough to realise he's still hungry. He hasn't eaten today, and not often in the days preceding. The body needs fuel. "There more?" he asks (dropping the verb "to be" from a question like that is a function of colloquial standard English, he remembers), and he catches the subtle muscle movements as the blond man startles at the sound of his voice.

He recovers quickly and looks down at him with a grin that looks at least partly genuine. "Sure thing, Sam."

_Sam_. He also insists on calling Soldat ‘Bucky’, and seems to expect them to call him Steve. It's… unnerving. Sokol has never called a handler by name. He's never had a handler attempt to make conversation before, either. Familiarity was discouraged.

Not here, apparently. When the blond man returns his plate with three more slices on it, he hands it over while asking, "Good, right?" Like he’s actually listening for an answer, though he doesn't attempt to hold the food hostage until he gets one. Sokol slides his gaze to Soldat, meeting his eye for a moment, then looks back at his food.

"Yes," he says finally. It seems to be the right response, as the blond man retreats back to his seat. He keeps looking at him and Sokol can feel his skin prickling under the attention, the instinct to stretch his wings and curl them around himself like a cocoon so that no one can see what he's doing. It's harder to swallow suddenly and he chews and chews, only vaguely aware of the blond man asking if he remembers having pizza before.

"все нормально." Soldat's Russian is clearer as he reassures him, and Sokol clings to the sound until his throat relaxes a little. When they'd met it would have been hard to say that either of them could… _look after_ the other, even with Soldat having been on his own for so much longer, but as Sokol had struggled with the directionlessness and responsibility for meeting his own needs Soldat had responded with increasing strength. That had only been emphasised since they'd found the blond man. 

It works, at least. The rushing in his ears subsides, leaving him feeling only a little hollowed out. "Sunt bine," he replies, figuring that the blond man probably doesn't know Romanian. For some reason it's easier to speak if he can at least assume that a stranger can't understand him, even if all he's saying is, on the surface, a simple agreement. There's a note of challenge in his tone though that makes it almost a challenge against the idea that he'd need reassurance, to which Soldat merely blinks at him. The blond man chuckles, apparently noticing the interplay even if he can't interpret the words.

"How many languages do you speak?" He sounds curious and incredulous at once.

Soldat answers so that Sokol doesn't have to. "Sixteen. I think. Him maybe nine."

They had tested it once, Soldat prompting him in all the ones he knew to see whether it triggered any kind of response. Nine is a minimum - he could still know more, ones that Soldat had never needed. He won't know unless and until he comes across them somewhere else.

"Huh. I should get a linguist here."

" _No_." They both tense up and Sokol quickly flicks his gaze to Soldat in surprise at his outburst, who looks in turn at the blond man like he's about to be punished. He's the one who's the more nervous of interacting socially with strangers, of the two of them, which doesn't make much sense to Sokol since _he's_ the one who can't so easily pass as a civilian. He wouldn't have spoken like that, if he hadn't been so wary.

"Okay, no linguist," the blond man says soothingly. That's it? Familiarity is one thing, damaging the bed is one thing, but Soldat has just openly contradicted him, and not on an objective statement of fact. Sokol’s stomach twists even as Soldat relaxes, though he still looks troubled. What kind of operation are the Americans running? "How about the doctors? Are they still okay?"

The silence drags for a moment until he nods jerkily; he's unobtrusively tapping his right fingers against his plate and the table to ground himself since he can't simply fold a shield around himself when he needs to. "When? Are they coming?"

"Tomorrow. Probably sometime before lunch. If that's alright."

Soldat glances at Sokol, a brief flicker that's almost over before it began, and it's hard to tell what he's thinking. He's even more closed off than usual. "Yes," he says. "That will be fine."

*

After the blond man leaves Soldat starts to shrink in on himself and fade until he could almost be a ghost. Instinctively Sokol tries to diagnose the problem - hunger can be ruled out as they've just eaten, while blood loss from an injury is unlikely in this setting. Fatigue is a strong possibility. Had he not slept? It takes a moment longer to consider it could be emotional fatigue rather than physical. Performing for others is stressful. He wants to ask… something, _something_ , but he isn't sure and can really only watch him helplessly as he moves silently around the room, occasionally picking something up to look at it before replacing it exactly where it had been before, no sign at all that it had even been touched.

Eventually his gaze is caught again by the pages that contain his life. It's as though they have their own gravity. "I flew before too," he says abruptly. There are pictures in his head that might be from that time, or might be from later, but he doesn't think so - they make him feel light and confident and reckless. He gets the feeling that once he could take the wings off again when he was done with them. "I think I remember that."

Soldat stops his pacing to study him, but doesn't say anything. Instead he approaches and settles down on the floor next to him, pillowing his head on Sokol's thigh and shifting until he's comfortable. Sokol rests a hand on him and winds his fingers in his hair, drawing a small hum from him. "I was pararescue. I saved people."

Soldat reaches up to pat him, though it ends up being more of a half-hearted grope just above his knee. He has to twist a little to sign a few words, but once Sokol deciphers them the meaning is evident. _I knew you were good._

"I didn't."

He gets a face buried in his trousers for his troubles. The silence doesn't bother him; neither of them are very _good_ at speaking consistently fluently yet, and conversations often flow poorly, stuttered with stops and starts like this. It's not like they have anything else to do now that they're trapped here. Just sitting and behaving and cooperating with doctors and the blond man and maybe if they get really desperate playing one of the board games sitting in a pile under the coffee table.

"Sam," Soldat mumbles eventually. "Samuel. Sammy."

Sokol huffs in amusement, tugging gently at his hair. It's a softer movement than he's used to, but he's starting to get better at getting it right, making him feel it without yanking too hard. " _Bucky_." He's pretty sure that's not even a real name. Not for a human, anyway. Maybe a dog.

"It's. Different. Not… not a description. A name." He frowns slightly and part of Sokol kind of wants to touch the wrinkle between his eyes. It's an inexplicable instinct. He can't imagine what it would accomplish, it's not even calming like stroking his scalp and combing through his hair seems to be.

"Do you… like it?"

The question must be as strange to hear as it is to ask. Though he's been free for far less time, he isn't sure how he'd react if Soldat asked him something similar, and when he tries to really consider it it triggers the same 'danger!' alerts as if he'd come across a target who was unexpectedly ready and waiting for him. His fingers tighten slightly and his wings pull forward, half-wrapping around both of them even as he squashes the feeling down. As annoyed at it as he is, though, he doesn't bother to retract them and Soldat doesn't complain. It probably helps that he _does_ release his hair and go back to just stroking it.

"I dunno," he admits finally. He doesn't seem truly upset by the subject, just uncertain. "Maybe it's the other way round. You use it til you like it."

"Maybe." He's already answering to Sam from the blond man. But the rules for behaviour are different with handlers. He doesn't think about it so much, just works around their quirks. If the blond were Hydra he'd try to fight it, but he isn't. He's Soldat's _friend_. He hadn't captured them, Soldat had gone to him.

Soldat twists around in one smooth motion so that he's looking up at Sokol and flashes him a small smile that nonetheless is just about bigger than any other he's ever shown. "You be Sam. But I'm gonna call you Sammy."

The instinct to smile back is there, right alongside the instinct to roll his eyes. The former is easier even if he does have to think about it a bit. "Okay. _Bucky_."


	2. Chapter 2

Steve's sense of time is still off when he wakes up the next morning in the apartment Tony's been keeping for him in the hopes of a real Avengers reunion. He's been using it as a stopover lately, somewhere to keep his things until he gets around to getting a new apartment after the one in DC was destroyed, which had seemed like a fairly pointless exercise while he was so busy tracking down Hydra bases. On a typical day, when he's been in the same timezone for more than a couple of weeks, he'd find himself waking pretty much right on six am so he could get up and go for his morning run, but today he doesn't know whether it's early or late until he rolls over to peer at his clock. Four thirty. Ugh. He buries his head in his pillow and manages to go back to sleep.

The next thing he knows it's closer to eight and there's light beaming in through the gap in the curtains. Since he's missed his run anyway, for a moment he throws his arm over his face and just lies there. Bucky's a few floors below him. It still feels a little bit like a dream, maybe because he'd spent most of a week in a hotel suite with him and now they're separated by several tons of high tech architecture. It hadn't been long enough to really feel like he _really is_ back, part of Steve still feeling like he's missing his right hand or some equally vital part of himself. (That probably makes him Bucky's left hand. Which he really did lose. He… isn't quite sure how well that analogy sits with him, actually, because that metal arm of Hydra's sure as hell isn't an adequate replacement.)

Eventually he pulls himself out of bed and starts tugging on clothing, not really caring too much what it is as long as it smells clean and doesn't obviously clash. Breakfast first. After that he can go see how they're doing.

*

There's a pack of cards sitting on the table, but it's closed like they never got around to opening it and neither of them are sitting there. Bucky's standing in the middle of the room looking expectantly in his direction when Steve opens the door, and when he looks closer he can see tension in all the lines of his body, his face drawn and tired and bruised under his eyes. He'd been doing okay in the hotel, he'd thought. He'd woken during the night several times, but otherwise slept silent and still, no screaming nightmares like Steve had half-expected. Maybe tonight he should start crashing on the couch down here. He's been trying to show them that this is their space here, that they're not being babysat or closely surveiled like they could go off at any moment, but it might be better. Or he could just want it to be better.

"Where's Sam?" he asks.

"Sleeping." Bucky glances towards the bedrooms and back again, his affect flat. The almost-there Bucky from their childhood that he'd spotted a few times yesterday seems far away right now. "Probably not now." It's hard to tell whether that's supposed to be an accusation of having made too much noise coming in or a statement of fact that he would have woken regardless of how quiet he was. Either way there's no sign of movement, no one emerging from out of sight.

"Everything okay?"

"Yes." Something flickers across his face, emotions that Steve can't quite catch, and then he corrects himself, "Sam is… not functioning at peak efficiency."

That's new. Yesterday he'd been Sokol, even after they'd confirmed who he really is. So far he's been acting based on a bit of cursory information on psychological trauma he'd found on the internet and pure instinct, and instinct tells him not to make a big deal of it. They've been stripped of their own identities, their names taken forcefully from them, and of all people Steve knows the importance of a name. He's Captain America, after all, and he's loathe to force anything on them that doesn't allow them to define for themselves who they are. They can call each other anything they want, though he can't deny he's glad for the change. If they're accepting that he's Sam, then they're most likely accepting that Bucky is Bucky. It just figures that that news comes along with a setback as well though. "How d'you mean? Trouble sleeping?"

"Sleeping." He pauses, blinks rapidly a few times, then says again, "Yes. Not a required function for missions. Adenosine triphosphate is restored during stasis process. The doctors are coming today."

The non sequiteur is just as startling as the… whatever he'd said before it. Like the languages, he doesn't want to think about where that knowledge came from; more than the languages it seems unsettling and sinister. Maybe because it's not something anyone would have understood in the forties. Maybe because it sounds like he's reciting something from a textbook - or an operating manual. He tries to ignore it like so much else, pushing down a sense of nausea. "Yeah. I'm not sure what time, exactly, someone will probably text me first. Two or three hours maybe." He hesitates, wanting to suggest Bucky try to get some rest in the meantime, but he's _never_ been good at sleeping when it's light out, and that had seemed to hold true while they were in the hotel as well. "Did you eat anything this morning?"

Bucky regards him with a faintly robotic stare for a moment. "There was oatmeal. We ate it plain. Couldn't afford sugar." He pauses to reflect for a moment. "It's better with sugar."

"Yeah, it is. Best thing about the future, the food." That and the internet, but Tony's still explicitly blocking access to that from this floor and he doesn't want to bring attention to it. Instead he nods towards the cards on the table. "Want to play?"

"I don't know. Ready to get your ass beat?" For all that he suddenly sounds just like himself there's still something a little off in his expression that Steve decides to try and ignore. For so much of the time he'd spent looking for him he'd been trying to remind himself that he might find nothing but a shell. Even if he's just putting on an act it means there's enough of him there to want to and be able to. He'll take it.

"Don't get too confident," he warns with a bit of a grin. "I was thinking of seeing if Natasha wanted to come join. The redhead who helped me on the helicarriers." He adds the clarification on remembering that they haven't actually directly interacted outside of a fight before, let alone been introduced.

Something unidentifiable flickers across Bucky's face. "I thought—" He sounds troubled, but doesn't continue with that thread, whatever it might be. "Alright."

Steve fires off a quick text before pulling out a chair and reaching for the cards. One thing he'd learned in the hotel was that however normally Bucky might or might not act at any given time, he's absolutely _shit_ at shuffling cards now. They'd always used to go by a standard house rule of rotating the dealer and it had taken a little while - and several somewhat hilarious fumbled attempts - before they both realised that they ought to just give up on that old habit.

Even though he doesn't actively try to draw out the shuffling, he's barely finished by the time the door opens behind him and Natasha sashays in. She must have been _close_ , though he has no idea where. "Morning, boys. What are the stakes?"

"There are no stakes," Steve replies. He finds himself sounding more disapproving than he'd really intended - it's not even like he's never gambled before - and suspects he's falling perfectly into some kind of trap. But then, he often feels like that around Natasha. Sometimes it's like she plans out exactly how a conversation is going to go before she has it, with the other person's lines pre-filled in. "It's just canasta."

"Pity. Come on, grandpa, are you going to deal or what?" She settles down between them, nodding at Bucky who's been watching her quietly while trying to look like he isn't paying any attention. If Steve can tell he's certain Natasha can as well, but to her credit she doesn't remark on it, and as they all start shuffling through their hands he can see Bucky start to fractionally relax.

Three rounds in she catches his eye and nods minutely towards the short hall to the bedrooms. For a moment he doesn't see anything and thinks he might have just over-interpreted the gesture, but then he spots a shift in the shadows and realises Sam must be standing just out of sight, listening in on them. He's surprisingly good at lurking for a near-six foot tall black guy with enormous metal wings; Steve never would have known he was there if not for Natasha's heads up. He deliberately turns his attention back to the game, continuing with his attempt to psychically command Bucky to discard a nine.

Unfortunately telepathy is not something that came bundled with the upgrade the serum had given him. He takes several seconds to consider the six on top of the slush pile despite not having a single one in his hand, hoping it looks as though he's deciding whether or not it's worth it before continuing with his turn. "You're not giving me much to work with here, buddy. Toss me an ace next time will ya?"

"Soon as I get some," Bucky agrees. "Got any other requests? I got plenty of spare wild cards."

Given that discarded wilds not only can't be picked up but locks the deck to make it harder to pick up anything else it's not a particularly generous offer, but even though Steve rolls his eyes he's grinning on the inside. 

The next round he discards an ace and fucking _winks_ , the asshole, and Steve can't hold back a laugh.

*

The doctors turn up twenty minutes after Sam finally emerges, looking like he's trying (and failing) to hide exhaustion and jumpy with so many people in the room. Unlike Bucky he's never met Natasha at all and he sticks near the walls, as far from the table as he can get despite her only reaction to his presence being a nod and a casual, "Hey."

There's two of them, entering in Tony's wake, and Steve can't help blanching a little because Tony has one of those ridiculously large and loud presences that overwhelms a room even when he's not actually saying anything. At least Bucky's been coping with Natasha, but he's definitely not Steve's first choice of new person to throw at Sam. When he looks over though he's surprised to see him looking relatively… well, to be honest, he's not entirely sure whether that look is "calm" or "dissociative", one of the words he picked up in his trawling of the internet. "Tony. I didn't realise you'd be joining us."

"Calm down, I'm just saying hi. Since this is my place and all." He glances between Bucky and Sam with an expression like part of him wants to get them in his lab with a screwdriver and start taking things apart. Luckily Sam has managed to keep his wings only _slightly_ raised and extended (more than a little resembling a cat with its fur on end) or he might not be able to control the impulse, Steve thinks, probably uncharitably. Tony isn't really a bad guy - Steve actually has a lot of respect for him and he's been great about providing him with modern devices that are easy to use for someone who's completely unfamiliar with what came before them - he just isn't always the best at interpersonal subtleties. "Tony Stark, resident tech genius. If you've got any requests I'll be taking care of them _personally_ , which for those of you who don't know is a pretty big deal. I also vetted these good doctors myself and I'm one hundred percent certain that they're no more Hydra than Steve is. If anyone was worried."

Thankfully he doesn't linger after that pronouncement, and Steve privately concedes that it wasn't that bad a move after all. He had assumed that anyone they cleared to get near Bucky or Sam would have been investigated thoroughly, but having him come down and announce it in person like it was one of his most important tasks of the day is… actually a little reassuring. Still, with him gone the atmosphere in the room does feel a bit calmer, especially when the woman doctor gives them all what seems to be a genuinely warm smile. "Maybe I should be putting that on my resume. 'No more Hydra than Captain America is.'" She speaks clearly, with a slight accent that Steve can't identify, and there isn't a trace of nervousness about her despite the fact that she's sharing a room with two assassins, a spy and a super soldier she grew up learning about in history class. She has to be at least a little intimidated, but she doesn't show it at all, and he can't help feel a touch of admiration for that. "I'm Heather Scott, and this is Jacob Westenra. We've been talking about ways to make this as non-invasive as possible but we are going to need some blood samples. Otherwise it's mostly a lot of scans. Mr Stark has some really fantastic equipment."

"I'll say." Jacob is busily unpacking it - bundled cords, a tablet, a couple of metal wands, an arm cuff like the kind for checking blood pressure - and to Steve's eye seems a little too focused on what he's doing for the amount of concentration the task really needs. He looks younger than Heather, maybe in his late thirties to her forty-something. "Now, do we— need to clear the room? Who's staying? We might need shirts off but, ah, no real nudity beyond that."

Natasha starts to get up at the same time as Bucky and Sam begin a brief exchange of gestures. Some kind of sign language, Steve realises, and wonders how long it will be until they stop having new things for him to be surprised over. Natasha raises an eyebrow and leans in towards him so that he can hear her when she murmurs, "Looks like a more subtle form of international sign," which, well, of course she would know.

"Steve can stay," Bucky says when they're done. He stares down at his metal hand, closing and opening his fist, but when he lifts his head again his expression is all steel and determination. "Blood first."

There's a lot of moving around and rearranging then as the doctors make sure they have all their vials and needles and alcohol wipes and Bucky pulls up his sleeve above his elbow, and then Steve gets distracted for a moment as Sam sweeps his wings back to press them together, tugs the front of his t-shirt over his head and slides it back off his wings and arms just like that, the wings compressing a little as they're squeezed through the gap in the shirt's back and then springing back out. Steve had wondered how that worked, but it had never seemed like a good time to ask and he'd never been in a position to get a good look. Shirtless, he looks a little too thin despite well-defined muscles. Steve isn't sure whether that's new since escaping or whether he was underfed with Hydra as well, but he thinks he can see how he should look - leaner than Steve is, but sleek and strong. Definitely without the bulk that _should_ be necessary for a human to support those huge metal wings in flight, even assuming they're lighter than they look.

He realises that he probably oughtn't be staring so intently just before he notices that Sam's knuckles are pale, fingers clenched tight on his t-shirt still in his hands as he watches Heather slide the needle into Bucky's arm. Bucky is— well, not _relaxed_ , but he looks more or less okay, so Steve doesn't feel too bad about turning his attention back to Sam, moving cautiously closer as he tries to assess whether contact would be comforting or not. When he doesn't shy away Steve figures it's safe to lay a hand on his bare shoulder, palm over the flat bone. He feels a momentary shudder before Sam almost imperceptibly leans into him like he's touch-starved, wanting and not knowing how to ask. Or, well, maybe that's just an over-active imagination, but he thinks he's at least a little bit right. 

Only when Jacob gestures for Sam to sit on the other side of the table from Bucky does Steve start to move away to avoid the awkwardness of trying to navigate the room without losing contact. Almost as soon as he pulls back though Sam's hand darts out blindingly fast to grab his wrist in a strong grip, dragging him along as he - reluctantly - follows directions. _Okay,_ Steve thinks, _Guess I'm not going anywhere._ Sam isn't even looking at him, which makes him think he's there more as a warm body than anything else, but if that's what he needs… At least over here he's close enough to hook an ankle around the leg of one of the remaining chairs so he doesn't have to stay standing.

Heather is still tidying up after the blood draws as Jacob starts Bucky's scans, and they at least look easy enough. They're mostly centered on his arm, of course, and for the most part all he has to do is rest it on the table's surface and answer the occasional question - does he know if there's a power source? has he had to do any maintenance since he's been under his own power? how much sensation is it capable of? His answers are always clipped, succinct. He's done this before. "Alright," Heather says when the area's clear again, unwinding cords from around one of their devices. "This will be a little more involved, I think. Would it be okay if you turned around and faced the back of the chair?"

It takes a little maneuvering, mostly on Steve's part as he helps Sam into a position that's at least relatively comfortable while still giving the doctor what she needs. Sam has his eyes closed, one arm wrapped around the chair back and the other fumbling for a grip on Steve's shirt again, and it's easy to see that strained expression on other, older faces suddenly, other soldiers who'd needed emergency patching up in the field.

"Now, I'm sorry," she continues, and she really sounds like she actually is. "To get the best images I'm going to have to handle the wings and move them around, and I'm not sure how uncomfortable that might be. Tell me to stop if you need to, or— just keep squeezing on the Captain, he can handle it."

Almost immediately Sam starts untangling his fingers and Steve has to reach up to stop him. "Don't, it's fine. I'm right here and Bucky's on your other side." Sam lowers his chin to lean on the chair back again, looking faintly sick and miserable, and after a moment's hesitation Steve settles his remaining free hand into his hair, applying gentle pressure as he rubs the scalp in wandering circles.

It seems to work; Heather shoots him a small smile. Her first scan is taken just like that, as he's sitting, but once that's done it's clear that all the rest will need some level of manipulation. "Alright, now if you just shift towards me slightly, I'd like you to very slowly extend both wings as far as they go."

The rest of it goes much like that, with Heather wanting to see different positions, to scan the skin underneath to get an idea of how far the cybernetics stretch, to look at individual feathers at various spots to take pictures of their shape and length and edges. All of it looks awkward and uncomfortable and every time his expression twists Steve doubles down on the soothing touches. He's struck by the fact that Sam seems to know far less about the wings than Bucky does about the arm and wonders whether it's because Bucky's had it longer or that it's been longer since he escaped. Though Bucky had always been excited about science, dragging them to the Expo for double dates rather than somewhere more traditionally romantic. Maybe he'd just been more curious.

A long ninety minutes passes before the doctors finally agree they have all the information they need, and Sam's gone before they even leave the room. Steve turns his full attention to Bucky instead. "Feel up to late lunch? I can make sure no one bothers us for the rest of the day."

For several seconds Bucky just stares down at his arm before straightening up with a nod. "Yeah. Good idea."

*

In the end Bucky haltingly suggests that Steve sleep in 'the other room' (he seems to mean his own, so probably he's planning to crash with Sam) before he can even bring it up on his own. Under the circumstances all the bustling around as they get ready for bed feels surprisingly normal, like they're just three guys sharing an apartment, making sure the dirty dishes are all in the machine to wash overnight, closing the heavy ceiling-to-floor curtains, packing the cards away, brushing teeth (Steve slightly after the others, having had to dash upstairs to grab his toiletries and nightwear). He should probably look into getting some video games or whatever books might help them catch up on things while they recover. It's a thought.

But for now his main thought is just on sinking into bed. It smells faintly of Bucky, he realises - and a little bit of Sam. He tugs the blankets up over his shoulders and closes his eyes, breathing in. He's warm and comfortable, his mind throwing up memories of just helping them settle down after the examinations today, of Sam standing shirtless in front of him and grabbing on so he couldn't move away. Looking at his chest he isn't nearly as dark as Steve had thought, more _bronzed_ than _black_ , with brown nipples and slight shadows in the lines between muscles. It makes his fingers itch for a pencil and sketchpad, to have him posed crouched down and dangerous with his wings extended, diving in flight straight down towards a target, engaged in close combat on the ground using them as extra limbs, extra weapons. Better though if he could catch one of the moments when he and Bucky are in tune with each other. He hasn't figured out yet what's between them. Maybe they just feel responsible for each other. Maybe it's a platonic sort of comfort seeking. Maybe it's more. His mind seizes on the idea of them in the other room, lying on the lowered bed, arms tangled up in each other as they trade lazy kisses, and suddenly his face is hot with lust/shame/embarrassment.

He shouldn't be thinking about this. Whatever they need to do between themselves to cope is none of his business and he certainly shouldn't be _thinking_ about it like this. In Bucky's bed, wearing nothing but loose sleep pants. Only a single closed door between them since Bucky had taken the other one off its hinges. If he listens he can hear the faint sound of them talking softly in a language he doesn't know, though not for long as they gradually drop off into near-silence and he's left trying not to fill in the picture.

God, this is so wrong. Bucky, yes, once upon a time they might have kissed every so often, after drinking a little or running from trouble or Bucky finishing a fight that Steve's started. Maybe a couple of times it even went a little further. But that was a long time ago, seventy years, and it hadn't really meant anything. He doubts Bucky even remembers, honestly. And Sam— He never even knew Sam before he became what he is now. Broken and brainwashed and until now with only broken brainwashed Bucky to help him.

It's just been a big day, he tells himself. Having Natasha down to play cards, and then the brief visit from Tony and the much longer one from the doctors, that's a lot of interaction with people they don't know, and he'd been on edge more than he'd realised. Now he's got the chance to really relax and it's messing with his equilibrium. Tomorrow, things will be closer to normal again.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains a bit more violence and references to coercive brainwashing techniques.

Sam goes from sleeping to waking without hitting any of the stages in between, the sensation of warm blood covering his hands and smeared over his face, overwhelming his senses and making his skin itch. For a moment he's terrified he's done something, something bad, but Bucky's still lying next to him looking just the same as he had the night before, breathing steadily under the shadow of Sam's left wing. The blood isn't real, he realises. He doesn't remember dreaming before, doesn't think he's done it in the entire time since he was captured by Hydra, but the diagnosis fits the symptoms. He hasn't been in a fight. Not recently. Not one in which he uses his wings as blades to open up slashes in his enemies, handholds that he can get his fingers into to rend flesh open, fighting alongside monsters like himself. Biting, tearing, snarls almost lost under the sounds of sobbing and screaming. Aiming for throats to cut the noise off only to add gurgling to the cacophany as airways fill with blood. His legs are tangled in the sheets and by the time he pulls himself free Bucky's blinking up at him.

"Wass wrong?" _He_ hasn't skipped straight to wide awake, though Sam's sure that he would if the threat was obvious instead of just inside his head. He can't answer, anyway, most of his focus on trying to bring his wings under control, but with his body still certain he's in danger they want to remain spread out ready to take off or intimidate and fight, whichever turns out to be more appropriate.

"Sammy?"

By the time Sam realises that Bucky has come up behind him he's already reacted, swinging one wing to push him back towards the bed before bringing them both in to cocoon himself from further attack. There's a thud, then a clank that must be his arm hitting something hard, and then a lot of scuffling as Bucky gets up and the blond man rushes in and in the corner Sam squeezes his eyes closed until little spots start swimming in the darkness.

*

When he calms down enough to at least half retract his wings Bucky is leaning against the opposite wall, waiting. Steve isn't, but if he listens he can hear him breathing out in the hallway, probably doing the same thing. He doesn't think he'd hurt Steve, but he had hurt Bucky. They should have both waited outside.

"What was it?" Bucky asks, not sounding as annoyed as he should for having been thrown into a bed.

He frowns, trying to remember. He'd woken up with blood on his hands and face. "I had." Not a vision. Maybe a memory, but he isn't sure. Doesn't have enough context. Maybe a dream, but he doesn't know why he'd come up with something like that. "No guns. Hands. Teeth, claws. Wings. There were more of us." He's already sitting down, but now he pulls his right wing back so he can press his face to the carpet, curling up on his side and closing his eyes again. There's nothing here that can hurt him, really.

Bucky's quiet so long that he opens his eyes again to see him frowning. He makes an interrogative sort of noise, not sure what of the many, many options has that look on his face. "That never happened," he says, but he tilts the tone of his voice up at the end to turn it half into a question.

Sam doesn't know. He can't remember. There are a lot of blank spaces in his memory - too many from his old life and not enough from with Hydra - and if what he was dreaming was real, it had been during one of those. "I don't have claws," he points out in lieu of trying to express any of his other doubts. Or sharp, jagged teeth, good for ripping into flesh.

"Well, you gotta eat breakfast."

The demand pulls more images from the back of his mind of partially de-fleshed corpses (or worse, people still alive), and Sam rolls his face further into the carpet. It's about as much protest as he can manage.

" _Both_ of you have to eat breakfast," Steve interrupts. The clarity of his voice says that he's come into either the room or at the least the doorway. "I'm making oatmeal. One bowl each, I know you haven't been eating in the mornings."

Sam peeks out just for a look at Bucky's face, because it's sure to be good. He likes to boss, but he's more… what's the phrase? 'Do as I say, not as I do.' Sure enough, his expression says he knows he's caught. The look of disgruntlement almost makes Sam feel better about being awake so soon after falling asleep in the first place. "In a few minutes," Bucky agrees with a sigh, head rolling back against the wall, and despite the dramatics Steve is apparently satisfied enough to leave them unsupervised again. 

Still, Sam would have preferred longer, his body wanting to just lie where he is until his brain gives up and goes back to sleep. When he finally drags himself up he stares at his shirt where it's crumpled on the floor and eventually decides it will be easier to just tug a blanket around his shoulders. Putting the damn thing on is always more of an annoyance than taking it off, and by now it also probably needs a wash. Those things matter, around other people.

After breakfast Steve reveals the secret tv hidden in the wall. Apparently the secret is a voice activated thing that might be a very advanced computer or might be a person controlling hundreds of tiny details in the tower. Sam thinks advanced computer makes more sense, it's just a lot more advanced than he remembers anything ever being. Then again, this is Stark Tower. With all the technology he's expecting something incomprehensibly modern, but then Steve says, "Hey, Buck, do you know they're still making Disney films? I've been catching up but it's taking forever."

He and Bucky might not have seen any of them before, but parts of One Hundred and One Dalmatians are almost achingly familiar to Sam. It's a major case of deja vu for the most part - sometimes he feels like he knows exactly what's about to happen, but he can rarely ever put his finger on it and on the occasions when he does he isn't quite sure that he didn't just guess. It's a kid's movie, after all, not exactly the kind of tangled conspiracy it takes a truly twisted mind to follow. He's not sure if the feeling's frustrating or comforting. At least with his file there'd been a strong pull that came from it being _personal_ , and anyway he sort of thinks that in that still-coming-back-to-reality mood he'd been in he probably would have just read anything someone had put in front of him. Not in the way he's doing now, though, because now he's actively engaged, he just doesn't really know enough about the subject to offer an opinion. He's pretty sure Steve's the only one of them able to do that right now, or maybe he's just picking them at random - once that one's over (and _how_ are they going to look after a hundred dogs? Sam's pretty sure that's got to be at least three or four full time jobs and a hell of a lot of money) he chooses Robin Hood, which according to the listings was released 18 years after the Dalmatians. He _knows_ he remembers Disney movies being more frequent than that.

He's pretty sure he remembers this movie, too. All the characters are animals, but most of them pale into insignificance compared to Robin as the fox with his tunic and jaunty hat. "I think I had a crush on him when I was a kid."

"On the fox?" There's a hint of confusion in Bucky's voice that instantly makes him wonder if he's said something wrong. Though on reflection, this is probably another thing that Steve is more in touch with than either of them, and he casts a glance sideways to see if he can figure out what he's thinking. He definitely has an expression, but hell if Sam can tell what it means. Bucky's bemusement is far more obvious. "Are you queer?"

"I'm not— I… don't know?" He really is uncertain, not just trying to figure out what answer is expected. He tries to dredge up hazy memories, or at least to imagine how he might feel coming across either naked men or women, but both options kind of leave him cold and he doesn't know whether it's all just been burned out of him or if he doesn't remember what his type is or maybe if he just only ever liked characters from cartoons because they weren't real and no one could be let down that way. He's just— not sure, is the thing.

Steve seems to have mastered his expression, finally. "I don't think you really have to know."

"Do you?" he asks, curious now, and there goes Steve's face again. Huh.

"I, uh. Well. Both, I guess."

Sam nods, about to turn back to the still-running movie, but Bucky apparently isn't done with the conversation. "You had Peggy," he says, tone of slight wonderment as though he's stumbled over something in his mind and is turning it over and over like it's so good he can't look away. "I remember that. Don't remember any fellas though."

If anything, Steve's stammering in response to that is even worse, and he looks incredibly relieved to be interrupted by the buzzing of his phone. He fumbles it out of his pocket like a bomb's going to go off if he doesn't get to it soon enough. "I gotta go, Natasha wants a meeting. There's stuff for sandwiches in the kitchen."

Bucky and Sam exchange a glance as he leaves, one that encapsulates all the long-suffering patience that Steve Rogers in full mothering mode inspires. Whatever. They might as well at least finish watching the movie first.

*

When Steve gets to the meeting room Natasha had picked he found not only her but Clint and Rhodes waiting, which is… interesting. Rhodes is in the tower a lot of course, what with his friendship with Tony, but as far as he'd been aware Clint had never been in the habit of coming around. He does work closely with Natasha sometimes though, and if he had to guess he'd say that this meeting being here is more out of convenience than because the subject matter has anything to do with Stark Industries. The idea is only confirmed when he takes a seat and Natasha immediately starts pulling up documents on one of the holographic screens - apparently they're not waiting for Tony to join them. 

"I've been looking for information on supersoldier experiments in the Hydra files. We'd already been over most of it, but with the new information—" That would be Sam, Steve guesses; "—it seemed like a good idea to go through it again with a fine-toothed comb. There were a lot of sections that didn't make much sense on their own the first time."

"And you found something," Clint concludes.

Natasha nods. There are two documents showing side by side on the screens, one that seems to be pieces from several different sources stitched together, a combination of Russian and German, and the other an English translation that's presumably for the benefit of Steve and Rhodey. His German is alright for most purposes but leaves much to be desired when it comes to anything scientific or technical, and his Russian is practically non-existent; he doesn't know what languages Rhodes might speak, but he has an inkling they're probably focused in an entirely different region. 

"When I was reading everything again, I found this and remembered what Barnes was calling Wilson." She highlights a couple of words in one of the paragraphs of Russian: снег сокола. Steve tries to sound it out in his mind. The c has to be an s, he knows that much. She…d? "Sneg Sokola," Natasha says. Not even close. "Snow Falcon."

"Snow Falcon, Winter Soldier. Sounds like a theme," Rhodes notes, apparently intent on what she's saying. 

"That's what I thought too, at first. But it popped up a few more times and I managed to link it to two more phrases that translate to White Wolf and Arctic Wind. There's only one reference to the Winter Soldier project in the files these come from. They seem to be a brand new operation, inspired by or derived from the Winter Soldier but not otherwise connected to it."

Steve thinks about that, thinks about two more soldiers being experimented on and surgically altered, metal spliced into flesh to create whole new monsters to do Hydra's bidding. He tries _not_ to think about how many failures there might have been and how those people might have died - blood loss, sepsis, shock, or just abandoned when it became clear that the results weren't satisfactory. "Any idea where they might be based?" he asks, part of his brain already running through potential rescue operations. He's going to need to talk to Bucky, find out anything he can tell them about the Prague base where he'd found Sam. 

"That's the second thing." Natasha's voice has gone flat, and the documents on the screen are replaced with what looks like a crime scene photo. For a moment Steve's brain fails to make sense of it, keeping each small detail separated out into disparate parts so as not to admit to the full picture. It's a mess. He isn't actually entirely sure how many victims there are; when he tries to count he finds himself paying far more attention than he really wants to the gore displayed in front of him. Whatever had happened, it hadn't left a single person in one piece, and from the amount of blood he'd guess they were alive for at least the start of it. "This is three years ago, Barcelona. We can definitively identify this as the work of, at the least, the Wolf and Falcon."

There's a brief lull as they all digest that, as well as the fact that one of the people responsible is seventeen floors below them, wrapped in a blanket watching Disney movies. Steve has seen some things, but even the Winter Soldier file was… easier, in some ways. The worst part of that had been that Bucky is, well, _Bucky_ , the guy he'd grown up with, to the end of the line and all of that. But his kills had mostly been fairly clean compared to this. Sniper shots, broken necks, professional work not too different from what he'd done in the Army. This is pure overkill. He can feel the weight of Rhodey’s eyes on him, and clears his throat. "Is this the only one?"

"Four more with the same M.O. Multiple assailants, multiple victims, bodies torn to pieces with a combination of slicing and puncture wounds. Forensics says that the puncture wounds are bites inflicted by sharp metal teeth in most cases. They also show up several times alone, which means they probably don't always work together. I don't have information on cases that we can attribute solely to the Falcon. The injuries he leaves are less distinctive and until now we weren't entirely sure what we were looking at."

"So we track more crime scenes like this. Focus on the metal teeth, see if we can find a pattern that might show where they're based." Clint seems unfazed, or perhaps he'd simply pushed it all aside to deal with later. For all that he seems like a simple guy he has almost as many hidden depths as Natasha.

She nods again, directing it mostly to Clint and Rhodes. "You two have your sources. Work them. I'll send you the forensics files. It's pretty clear that we don't want to leave these two out there under Hydra's control, especially now that they've lost Barnes and Wilson. They'll probably be leaning on them more often to make up for that. That means more chances to find them, but also more victims."

Victims who won't go down with a quick shot through the brain, Steve hears. When he looks up she's gazing at him in a way that makes him suspect it's what he's meant to. _Don't forget what they are,_ it says.

Yeah. Okay. After this, he isn't sure that's going to be a problem.

*

By the time Steve comes back they've finished Robin Hood, Who Framed Roger Rabbit and The Little Mermaid and are onto Aladdin. Sam's taken over the couch, lying on his stomach and blinking tiredly at the screen every so often, and his right wing has gradually sagged downwards until the outer edge rests on the floor, leaving Bucky to attempt to find a place to sit where he can safely lean back against the sofa. It turns out to be somewhere around Sam's knees, but only because he's okay with the damn thing draping over half of him. It helps of course that the metal they used, whatever it is, is quite light and hammered out thin on top of that. It's at least similar to his arm, possibly a more refined alloy. They had had sixty years to improve their technology after all.

"We ate lunch," he tells Steve without being prompted or really even looking away from the television. Aladdin's just tricked the genie into getting him out of the collapsed Cave of Wonders without wasting any of his wishes, which means now he has to decide what to use the first one on and Bucky wants to see what he goes with. So far he likes the kid. He's canny. When Steve doesn't answer he glances over to find him gazing at them with an odd expression. "What?"

He shakes his head. "Nothing. What are you watching?"

Bucky might not know Steve as well as he used to, and he knows he's no good at people in general anymore, but he's pretty sure that 'nothing' is complete and total bullshit. He narrows his eyes at him for a moment as he does the calculus of possible importance of whatever's bothering him vs the likelihood of him talking about it either out here or alone vs watching the rest of the movie. "Think I've hit my limit," he decides, carefully easing himself out from under Sam's wing (he makes a noise of acknowledgment, but doesn't really move) so he can grab Steve by the arm and drag him off to his room. "What is it?"

He hesitates again, looking torn. "It's not— I don't entirely know yet." This time the shake of his head is a very definite subject change. "You looked cosy."

"We've been sitting in the same place all day, had to get comfortable somehow." Bucky has the feeling again that he gets sometimes in conversations these days, where he knows that there's some kind of social code going on but can't quite remember how to translate it. 'Looked cosy'? What's that supposed to _mean_?

"It's just nice. You seem… more settled than I expected. Or hoped, really."

"Okay," he says slowly.

"Well I know you've been looking out for him. I just think maybe it's helped."

Oh. He's being sentimental. He does remember that about Steve. He could be a stubborn little asshole at times, but he at least tries to make sure people know how he feels, more than most men did back then. Even if he's terrible at it sometimes - it's not like Bucky has room to judge. Case in point, he's not too sure what the appropriate response to that is, except that he doesn't want Steve to think it's… something transactional, like that. Like Sam's a puppy that he picked up because he read that looking after a pet can be therapeutic. (He has read that, but the idea of bringing an animal into his stupid chaotic life just seems cruel to him. Much less a person.) He's pretty sure Steve _does_ know it, really, it just. Bothers him. "He's good," he insists, as though someone's tried to argue otherwise. "He's real good, he tried to protect me and he didn't even know me, I just… didn't want to drag him into my shit." And hell, he knows that practically anyone would argue that busting up Hydra bases is as much Sam's shit as his, but he doesn't gotta be rational in his own damn head. Anyway, Steve doesn't argue it. Maybe he's too busy trying to hide a flinch that has Bucky narrowing his eyes at him with a frown. "What?" He's gonna get real sick of asking that soon. "And don't say it's nothing again, cause it's not."

Steve ducks his head, rubbing the back of his neck with a sort of _aw shucks, you caught me_ look of chagrin that's startingly familiar, and for a moment Bucky can see him as he was as a teenager - half the size, in badly fitting clothes, often with the start of a black eye as Bucky laughingly tells him off for getting into another fight with several guys way too big for a little guy like Steve to be even thinking about messing with. He thinks he remembers those lectures only ever being half a joke, an attempt to cover up how scared he was that one day he wouldn't be there to get him out of it and he'd have worse than a whole pile of bruises to show for it. He doesn't let the trip down memory lane sidetrack him though, just staring at Steve as he waits, and after a few moments of silence he drops his shoulders with a sigh. "Natasha thinks there's two more like Sam that they— made, all at once. Sometimes they worked together, sometimes not. They're trying to come up with any recent intel that might tell us where to look for the others."

Two more.

He can't help but think back to Prague. He had, at first, thought it was one of the sites where they'd held him between missions sometimes. The security doors that were designed to make it easier to get in than out had been the first clue that something was different. The second had been the room with the chair that he'd left smashed in unusable pieces. The chair had been different, though, three sides of the seat surrounded by a low bar rather than the armrests and tall back that he was more familiar with, with more metal restraints dangling down from the ceiling. He still isn't sure how they were all supposed to go together except that they somehow accommodated for the restraint of a pair of wings. Before his destruction of the equipment, though, he'd come across the staff, interrupted in the process of putting a freshly-wiped Sam back into a cryo chamber.

He'd thought, when he saw him pushing through the effects of the heavy-dose sedatives designed to keep him pliant until the freezing process starts, that he was going to have a bigger fight on his hands than he'd planned for. He hadn't expected the uniformed Hydra agent in the rear to collapse to the ground with most of his neck severed. Between them they'd dispatched the agents quickly and brutally and as the last one went down Sam had stumbled over to him, unsteady and confused, and reached out to press his hand against Bucky's metal arm.

Two more.

Probably experimented on like they were. And Sam had worked with them before, must remember them on _some_ level… enough to see Bucky's arm and to immediately feel more loyalty to him than to his handlers. It makes him wonder just how much they'd worked together… and how Sam would react to seeing _them_ again. He doesn't much like the idea that Sam's relationship with him is based so directly on Hydra's conditioning.

Only part of his mind registers Steve asking, "What are you thinking?", the rest of him still staring at nothing and running through all the ways Hydra has of creating the behaviours they want. He does not remember all of his handlers - only, he suspects, a minority - but those that he does each had their own way of asserting their authority. How might they force a bond between multiple subjects? Co-operation against overwhelming odds, perhaps. Rewarding protection. Punishing aggression. Shared isolation. He has brief memories of rooms with no light and thick walls, the only sounds muffled and distant. Maybe it is the same memory. Maybe they are all different memories. He does not recall there being any way of tracking the passing of time. He remembers being very, very grateful when they came to let him out.

He is aware that the word being repeated by the only other person in the room ought to mean something to him but it feels like something happening in another room, difficult to see as more pressing than the inside of his own head. He cannot afford distractions where Hydra is concerned. There are too many expectations, too many risks, too many factors to keep track of. 

It's only when his arm's taken in the start of what is clearly intended to be a solid grip that he actively shies away, lashing out as he jerks backwards and then swinging back in like a metronome, automatically reaching to grab for the unprotected, vulnerable throat of the threat. But the expression he's confronted with is wrong; deep hurt rather than anger or even fear. This is wrong. He has no parameters to know what to do here. Backing away quickly, he finds it prudent to remove himself from the situation. The wardrobe in the other bedroom is insufficient but the best he can do. To his relief, no one follows.


	4. Chapter 4

Being awake has started to become a huge overwhelming force. It drags at Sam's mind, weighs him down, makes his eyes ache. He starts spending most of his time lying on the couch with his eyes closed to at least give them a rest, sometimes listening to Bucky and Steve as they move around or make stilted conversation, sometimes staring blankly at the tv or a computer screen (a new privilege they've just been granted that he feels like he should be more enthusiastic about), sometimes just zoning out and letting his mind drift.

The first medication they try him on makes him sleepy. It also makes him so nauseous that he has to huddle in the bathroom trying _not_ to fall asleep so as to avoid choking on his own vomit while he's out. 

The second does nothing, which after the one before is almost a relief.

The third, finally, works. He passes out for fourteen hours straight, then spends the next eight in a groggy fog that surrounds his brain and makes it difficult for anything to penetrate. He's only just starting to get more coherent when Dr Scott comes back with the next dose.

It's a process, is the point, and by the time he's halfway aware of what's going on again Bucky's in therapy and Steve will barely look at him. Natasha's been coming by, he knows that - playing cards, bringing takeaways for them to try, having intense-looking conversations with Bucky when Steve isn't around that Sam honestly couldn't recall the contents of despite being all of twenty feet away for half of them.

"The man is infuriating," she says at one point. Then later, "Does that really match what you remember?" But most of the time their voices just fade into low background noise, gently rising and falling in a way that lulls him into a doze.

When he wakes up again Bucky is leaning against the couch with his knees pulled up, using them as a flat surface to prop a notebook on as he scribbles in it. He appears to be using Sam's wing to shield what he's writing from being seen and for a moment he considers leaving it there. But now he's awake he can feel the drag of it against the cushions and just knows it's going to annoy him. As soon as he pulls it in Bucky pauses in whatever he's writing, resting his hand on the page as he looks up at him. "What time 'sit?"

"Nearly seven. Steve's coming back with dinner."

Dinner. Right. He'd slept through breakfast again and eaten lunch in bed on Bucky's insistence. It doesn't really seem like it should be time to eat again already, but if it's that time of the evening then they're running later than usual. His thoughts catch up with him then, and he looks around the room with a frown as though to verify that Steve really isn't there before peering back at Bucky. "Then why you hiding under me?"

There's a pause, then Bucky shifts a bit, looking a little rueful. "Habit?"

Sam huffs a laugh into the cushion and lets his eyes drift closed again. The weight of his wings on his back is comforting and he can feel a bit of warmth against his side where Bucky's head rests. The way his toes extend slightly past the armless end of the couch is made up for by the firmness of the cushions, and while he wouldn't mind a blanket the apartment is warm enough that it doesn't really matter. He almost feels like he could lie here forever.

"The shrink gave it to me," Bucky says after a brief silence. Sam makes a noise of acknowledgement, not moving. "Coz I didn't say anything, I guess. Said to write down anything I couldn't say." The slightly mocking lilt of his voice as he says the last few words makes it clear that he's quoting what someone else has said. "I don't know. It's okay."

From the intent way he'd been writing before Sam would guess that he's more engaged in the activity than he's letting on, but he's hardly going to call him out on that. Communication is a lot more about intention than precision, anyway. "'S good," he mumbles instead. Apparently this response is adequate, for all that he'd have said more if he had been fully awake, because Bucky bends his head and starts writing again, pausing every so often to tap the pen against the page as he thinks.

Eventually Steve returns with something that smells really good and Bucky gets up to help him, the two of them talking in low tones until Sam summons sufficient motivation to rouse himself and come to the table to find paper bags holding together what Steve proudly declares to be souvlaki. It's familiar but distant in a way that makes Sam unsure whether it's something he'd had before Hydra and he just doesn't remember well enough to know or if it's simply the Mediterranean, Middle Eastern sense of it. He knows he was stationed over there when he was in the Air Force, has a few memories that he's pretty sure are from one of his tours. It's good, anyway, and he works his way through it listening to Steve and Bucky talk about mid-twentieth century history. He can hear careful notes where they tread carefully, keeps wanting to brace himself as he senses one of them bite something back. It's less stilted, but no easier than it has been for a little while, even when they get on the subject of the basics of the internet where it seems like Steve is only a step or two ahead of Bucky.

In between taking his medication and crawling back into bed Steve interrupts him, holding a book out for him to take. It's another notebook, the cover decorated with a photo of a group of swans floating serenely in a lake. Which is a bit rich considering what enormous jerks swans are. "I, uh, had one of these myself for a while. I mentioned it to Jackie, I guess she liked the idea. You don't have to use it, just… if you remember anything, or want to figure out how you feel or anything. It might help."

It's awkward as hell, but at least Steve is looking at him and doesn't shy away when he accepts it, and when he thanks him Steve's smile actually looks genuine instead of weird and tense.

*

He's flying. It's the most amazing feeling, to be free of all constraints, to be more powerful even than gravity, to tuck his wings in to arrow towards the ground as the wind rushes past him and then flare them out again to catch himself before he hits and swoop back into the sky until he finds an updraft. Down below him everything is tiny, people and cars like grains of rice, even the biggest buildings no bigger than dice. Nothing is important. Nothing matters more than the sheer joy of this.

A high pitched noise echos up to him from below and he gets caught in the sound waves. Suddenly his limbs aren't his to control anymore. His course wobbles. He tips forward. The sound drags him down in a never-ending tumble that he can't get control of, the wind pushing his wings in all kinds of wrong directions every time he tries to extend them or get some balance. He's spinning and flipping and falling and he can't stop walking down the hallway, the walls and floor smeared with blood. He follows the trail faster and faster as blood puddles on the floor around him, his feet making slapping sounds, then splashing sounds, then finally the space opens out around him and he's standing thigh deep in a pool of it while he turns and turns and turns trying to find the source of the rhythmic crunching noises that sound like nothing more than something chewing through bone, tearing at flesh, eating, eating.

*

"Sammy. Sammy, wake up."

A thin, weak kind of light filters into the bedroom through the big windows, the curtains hanging open where they've been untouched since they moved in. Somehow Sam's gotten all tangled up in the duvet and Bucky's already working to unhook fabric where it's caught on some of the feathers. He's curled in close enough that once he's got his bearings Sam can tuck his head down against his shoulder, under his chin.

"You were twitching," Bucky says as he continues to straighten out the duvet. Sam can feel the pressure of his hands where they move over the metal. No real detail, no texture or temperature, just… the awareness that something's there. "Okay?"

Sam nods slightly, closing his eyes and trying to pick out the sounds and smells and sensations that give the assurance that he really is still here. The sheets above and below him, the fabric of Bucky's t shirt, his skin against Sam's arm. "Don't think it was real."

"You going back to sleep?" He finishes untangling the duvet and resettles it over them, and once he's done he leaves his arm draped where it is over Sam's side. "It's still pretty early. Steve hasn't gone for his run yet."

Normally he would. Probably right back, with how tired he still is. It's starting to get better but he's really looking forward to his body adjusting to these drugs so he can sleep a more reasonable amount. He'll take too much over too little, sure, but it still sucks. Right now though the dream has him unsettled, like if he drifts off again he's going to find himself right back in that huge echoing room. For all that it was hardly the worst thing he's ever dreamt, there's something profoundly disturbing about it that has him shaking his head and loosely grasping Bucky's t shirt in his fist as though he can physically hold himself away from unconsciousness and just needs a tether.

For a moment Bucky's silent, just the sound of his heartbeat and him breathing, the exhales gently brushing at his still too long hair. But apparently he's simply gathering his thoughts. "They got these things on the internet. Memes. I been trying to figure them out because sometimes they don't make _any_ sense." He keeps talking, describing some of the more baffling images he's come across and his attempts to understand what they actually mean. It's diverting enough to keep his attention in the here and now, laughing quietly every so often. He has more base knowledge of the internet than Steve or Bucky in theory, but he doesn't think he used it often before being deployed - maybe some email and web searches, really simple stuff. So far he's barely even touched the laptop they've been given, whereas Bucky's taken to it with enthusiastic interest. 

He falters at the blare of Steve's alarm clock in the other room, dampened as it is by the walls in between and Sam lifts his head to look at him. He feels a lot better already, really, and when Bucky twists a smile at him he shifts forward to press their lips together. No surprise that they fit so well. The clearest memories Sam has are all of Bucky. The first time he saw him he threw his lot in with him, 100%, recognition of the bond created by the places where flesh gives way to metal. He wraps his hand around that carefully crafted forearm where it rests on the bottom sheet between them as Bucky kisses him back, comfortable and good. 

They pull back to breathe, staring at each other. "I used to like that," Bucky says wonderingly after a few beats. It's the sound of remembering 'oh, that's right, I had a life once'. Sam is intimately familiar with it. "A lot."

"Same." He maybe doesn't remember all the details, but he's got enough to know that he's definitely done this before. It's kind of a relief, to know.

This time Bucky pulls him in, thumb resting behind his ear and fingers tangling in the hair at the back of his head, teeth dragging at Sam's lower lip until he makes a soft noise. Neither of them push to go further - it's nice enough just to lie there exchanging kisses, licking into each other's mouths with the occasional gentle nip or bite. Sam isn't sure he's felt anything so uncomplicatedly _good_ in a long time, especially when Bucky's fingers start stroking his scalp, making a shiver run down his spine and through his wings. Maybe flying. Probably flying. But right now he can't do that, not just because they're trapped in here but because the drowsiness that even now is creeping back up on him combined with the crowded city below can't possibly be safe in combination.

Steve's door opening separates them again, both waiting as his footsteps move down the hallway and he issues a breezy, "Morning" as he passes the empty doorframe. A few seconds later the outer door opens and closes, leaving them alone in the apartment.

"Okay," Sam says, "now I'm going back to sleep." As nice as this is, he's pretty sure that falling asleep in the middle of kissing would be less than ideal. But he's half-forgotten the details of the dream now, and besides that the disturbed, unsettled feeling is entirely gone, making it hard to remember why he hadn't wanted to just close his eyes again and snuggle further down into the bed right away.

Bucky drags his hand away, letting it slide over his skin until it can't anymore. It leaves a trail of warmth that starts to tingle a little as the sensation fades. "I'll be in the kitchen."

Sam just nods, rolling onto his stomach as Bucky slides out of bed to capture the warm spot where he was lying, and in the end he's asleep before Bucky's left the room. 

*

If he's honest with himself, Steve likes his route around Central Park better than the National Mall in DC. He isn't sure he'd be able to articulate exactly why he'd even run that route, if anyone had asked - yes, it was convenient, but it might be considered strange to use all those dramatic war memorials as a backdrop for his morning run. He isn't even sure he likes them. Any of them. He'd had a good laugh the day he'd toured all of them, just to see them, and found the KILLROY WAS HERE graffiti by the Pennsylvania pillar, but on the whole something about the grand architecture, clean marble, lists of names… It just doesn't seem to jibe with the realities of the war, for him. _Dulce et decorum est,_ a little.

Maybe that's why he'd run there. To remind himself of all the millions of people who come to see the pillars and obelisks and walls and feel like they somehow reflect the magnitude of the human tragedy. Part of him is glad of their ignorance. Part of him's jealous and, very occasionally, on one of his worse days, just a tiny bit resentful. He tries not to admit that feeling too much, let alone indulge in it, because he could have been one of them, he'd worked so damn hard not to be one of them, and it's not like he was forced into it. It's hardly their fault.

Central Park… well, it's only got the one memorial, for what he still sometimes thinks of as the Great War, and it's easy to avoid. The whole thing is just a lot less emotionally complicated. It's more crowded, but the serious joggers mostly leave him alone and he doesn't mind the kids, at least. He'd stopped to talk to a few of them today and somehow ended up in a game of frisbee (with an actual frisbee, no matter how much they might be pretending it's his shield) before hitting the French bakery on the way back to the Tower.

The first thing he hears as he opens the door is someone moving around in the kitchenette. Bucky, probably. "I got pastries," he announces, kicking his running shoes off. The apartment smells different, he realises a moment later. Almost like… "Are you _baking_?

Sure enough, Bucky's got the oven on with something in it as he attempts to clean up after himself. There's flour spilled on the bench and at least three spoons leaving smears of… butter, some kind of brown powder, and molasses, if he's not wrong, underneath them. There's at least two bowls and three different measuring cups in the sink. He shoots Steve a look that says very clearly ' _I dare you to say something_.' "What, a guy can't feel like baking?"

"No, no, that's fine. Just, uh…. why _are_ you baking, exactly?" Since there's clearly no space safe from the mess on the bench he sets the bakery bag down next to the laptop on the table and turns to lean against it, arms folded. Bucky has flour in his hair. He probably ought to tell him that.

"What," Bucky repeats with a bit of a sniff, turning back to the washing up. "A guy can't feel like doing something _nice_?"

He opens his mouth to reply, then closes it again, frowning at the back of his head for a moment as he realises he _recognises_ this behaviour. "You're giving me a hard time." His attempt at narrowing his eyes accusingly is a bit of a farce when he would much rather grin. Bucky's sounded like himself a few times before, but even when he's teased it sounded a little bit like something he was just putting on. This feels different somehow. More real.

"Well you don't gotta sound so excited about it, _Christ_."

Which is exactly what he's been reading, and what the therapist had said. Don't over-react, don't make a fuss, don't make him self-conscious. "Sorry. You just sound like you're in a good mood. It's nice."

He shrugs, the movement jerky with the line of tension that seems to always reside in his shoulders these days. The intensity with which he's staring into the sink suggests there's something he wants to say. Steve wants to ask what it is, but bites back the question, trying to be patient. Just because Bucky's acting closer to his old self, doesn't mean he can forget how damaged he still is.

The wait pays off a lot better than he'd expected. "I kissed Sammy."

"You— what?" He reacts before he can even think, surprised into it by the complete unexpectedness of the admission.

"It's not like it's illegal anymore," Bucky mutters, defensive and defiant, and Steve isn't sure whether he's talking about Sam being a man or Sam being black. It probably doesn't matter anyway, despite the fact that he's never seen Bucky show the _slightest_ interest in men before. Maybe he just didn't talk about it. Maybe it's just Sam. He's attractive as hell, and Steve knows he can't really understand what they've been through together. And it's not like he hasn't thought about it— about them, whether it's like that. A little more than thought about it, he remembers.

 _Not_ important, and definitely not something he wants to share. He shakes his head to try to push the memories aside. "I'm not upset, just surprised. That's great, Buck. Really. If you're happy, I'm happy."

"He's just so good. It's not fair what they did to him."

"Not to you, either."

"It's not the same," Bucky insists, glancing over at him over his shoulder. He's got a little furrow in the middle of his brow like he's really concerned about getting Steve to understand. "He saved people. I killed them. I remember some of the stuff I did in the war."

Steve does, too. The things both of them had to do. He hardly thinks that's a good way of judging character, though. War's an entirely different beast. "We're just going to have to disagree on that," he says firmly, and then because he knows Bucky's just going to argue otherwise he crosses over to join him. "Here, lemme help. I don't know how you made so much mess here."

Between them they manage to get everything cleaned up and put away and the cookies on a cooling rack before Sam emerges, dressed but looking a little rumpled in bare feet, jeans and a StarkTech t-shirt. Steve starts to lift the paper bag to offer him a pastry, but rather than acknowledge them he approaches the big south-facing windows, pressing his hands against the glass and staring out at the horizon. Steve and Bucky exchange glances, and Bucky shrugs. "В чем дело?" he asks.

Sam's silent and still for a moment before shaking his head slowly. "Nothing. I don't know."

Steve returns Bucky's shrug and keeps eating. He's actually starting to get used to this sort of weird behaviour, he realises. Enough so that he's perfectly fine to just sit and wait until Sam's done staring cryptically into the distance and comes over to sit down. The smile he gives Bucky is… a little adorable, honestly, and he has to resist the urge to comment or really visibly react in pretty much any way.

"Did someone make cookies?"

"Bucky," Steve says immediately. Something about Bucky's expression suggests he was about to start dissembling and probably imply that Steve had had some hand in it. "They're just cooling."

"Awesome." He draws his knees up, resting his feet on the edge of his chair, and it's only because Steve's watching that he catches the rapid flick of his eyes towards the pastries.

Well. They can't make all the progress at once, he thinks with a small sigh, and pushes the bag over in wordless permission.


	5. Chapter 5

Apparently Sam's escape from scheduled therapy sessions is just temporary until he can stay awake for more than half an hour at a time. Sometimes when they've been in the apartment it's like they've got their own little world, a perfect bubble that he can see out of but be safe inside, only Steve or Natasha being able to cross to and from. Finding out that this therapist has her own office not ten metres away is both disconcerting and kind of, for some reason, a little upsetting. He hadn't even _known_.

Even without a lab coat or medical equipment or a box of chalky latex gloves there's something about her that just screams medical authority. She might be smiling gently at him, she might be practically half his size even without his wings, but it's like sitting across from a handler. He can't get comfortable, and at the end of an hour he's spent about ten times as long hiding behind his wings than he has attempting to answer questions and managing little more than a tight shrug or a brief noise. He suspects she might have just started reading a book or something halfway through.

At least there are cookies afterwards, chewy and golden brown, and Bucky leans against the sofa and lets him play with his hair. It feels. Feels. Like he's getting away with something, like he needs to keep checking the door to make sure no one's about to catch them and punish them. He can see it opening in his mind, hear the little huff of air as it opens and slides out of the frame, but everytime it gets wide enough to see the person on the other side it just— resets. He doesn't actually know who in the Tower might want to control what they do… but then, he doesn't know who's even _in_ the Tower, apart from the doctors and therapist and Steve and Natasha and Tony.

Maybe the therapist is Hydra.

Probably not. He doesn't think Steve would allow that. If there's Hydra in the building, it's someone he hasn't met yet. But there are other reasons people might want to control them. Or, well, he supposes it's the same reasons, just different players. He's pretty sure Natasha would do it, but he doesn't think she'd be so crude as to use force or fear. She'd make them think they were choosing it. Tony Stark, on the other hand? He met the guy for all of two minutes. About the only thing he knows about the guy is that he sort of remembers seeing and working with an awful lot of weapons branded StarkTech in the Air Force, but he knows he's got to be taking a risk in letting them stay here, physically and probably financially. Maybe it's because he's friends with Steve, maybe it's because he wants to study them, maybe there's someone he wants to point them at. Maybe he just thinks it would be nice to have a couple of assassins in his debt. Like stamping an invisible logo on their metal parts, claiming them in secret in preparation for the day it most benefits him to unveil them.

This might be a nice cage, but he's under no illusions that it isn't one still. Or that there aren't rules, expectations of their behaviour. It's just that now, when he's more reasonably rested and thinking a little more clearly, he's fully aware that he has no idea what they - or the consequences for breaking them - might actually be. He might not know everything about himself yet, but he's quite certain he really doesn't enjoy the uncertainty.

Predictably when the door does open he immediately tenses, only realising his grip has tightened when Bucky has to reach up to loosen it. It's only Steve, but he slides his hands out of Bucky's hair anyway, too self-conscious to keep up the petting. 

"How was therapy?"

Ugh. He hadn't even managed to get out any real words _during_ therapy, he sure didn't want to talk _about_ therapy. He just shrugs instead, considering snagging another cookie from the plate on the coffee table and not quite able to make his muscles actually listen to him.

Luckily Bucky's there to divert attention. He's staring at Steve with a frown, evidently bothered by something he sees. "You changed clothes."

"I was at the gym." Honestly, now that Sam has been getting slightly more adequate sleep, he's starting to realise that Steve is just not a very good liar. He's obviously read or heard or been told that people look away when they lie, so when he's really trying to sell something he looks at you for too long, too intently, and he can't control the faint flush that hits his cheeks at all.

Neither of them are equipped for a staring competition, and though Bucky's probably better at it than Sam, he still ends up being the first to look away after several seconds. "Can we watch more of that science warehouse show?"

"Yeah. Okay." He doesn't join them for it though, just sets it up to roll from wherever Bucky had gotten up to last time, and Sam watches him quietly as he retreats to his room. He wonders what's going on.

*

The first thing Steve does once he's alone is open his laptop, letting it connect to the network and start downloading a stream of files from their investigation that day. They'd been having some luck uncovering more historical incidents that could be attributed to the three assassins they now knew about, but nothing that had been truly useful. Not until today, at any rate, and that hadn't come from any files. No, this crime scene was fresh. One of their forensics people, a wiry little South Asian man with CHETTY stitched across the breast of his blue cover-alls, had taken it upon himself to point out to Steve some of the factors they use to determine time of death. He knows rigor mortis, of course. He's seen lividity, dark stains on the underside of a corpse where the blood has pooled. Then there are words he doesn't know, like algor mortis and tardieu spots and tache noire. "This man died with his eyes open," Chetty had explained. "Probably fighting back, as we see from the evidence of defensive wounds." Evidence, of course, because the man's body is hardly in pristine condition, having been torn at and mutilated - "probably, for the most part, shortly after death," he was assured.

It's understandable that Dr Chetty would be relatively unfazed by it all, but even with everything he'd seen in the war, Steve had been glad to leave him to it and check in with Natasha for a more useful summary. "I think they were after information."

"Both of them?" He still doesn't know what they're supposed to be looking for when it comes to the third one, but so far everything he'd seen points to Wolf and his(?) teeth.

"Two people came through here." She'd indicated the open doorway to another room, filled with the smashed remains of computers and office equipment, blood tracked across the floor and walls.

Steve just looked at it for a long moment, already tired of the place. "Let me know if you figure out what they wanted," he'd said finally.

Now he can see the little window popped up on his screen, status bar showing how much progress the download has made, and hopes it's not all just crime scene photos and raw data. He'd rather just be given a target, straight up, point him in the right direction and let him loose so he can fix all this. Even though he doesn't know yet what fixing it looks like. Are they saveable? Two more Bucky-and-Sams out there waiting to be broken free? Or just Hydra's monsters good for a bullet between the eyes and regrets and not much more? Well. A lot of regrets. Chances were they'd been good soldiers once, either Americans or some kind of ally.

His phone buzzes then, and when he pulls it out he can see it's a text from Natasha. _Another one. Several days old. Newington._ South DC, near the I-95. The first one - second, chronologically - had been north-east of there, almost on the way to Baltimore.

It probably doesn't have any significance that they're getting closer. Two points hardly makes a pattern.

 _Thanks_ , he texts back, and tosses his phone onto the bed where it bounces a couple of times on the mattress. When his computer beeps to announce the completed download he turns to look at it for a minute, half-tempted to just ignore it and go back out to watch tv with the others. Ignoring things has never made them less of a problem, however. He's just going to have to deal with it.

*

Steve is acting weird. It's got both Bucky and Sam unsettled and sleeping badly, and the worst thing is that Bucky is completely conscious of its affect on him and he still can't help himself. Small difficulties start seeming overwhelming. His patience frays. He keeps speaking Russian when he means to go for English. He's putting so much energy into watching Steve out of the corner of his eye - his increasing moodiness, the frequent bouts of texting with someone that have him giving intense looks to his phone as he types laboriously, his abrupt disappearances - that he can't focus on regulating his own behaviour. Mind you, Sam has practically stopped taking initiative to do so much as eat and barely speaks at all, so maybe he's doing okay. He hadn't even realised until now how much Steve's presence and equilibrium had been keeping them steady, but now it's all messed up and he can't figure out _why_. He keeps going over the last few days, trying to decide what might have caused it. Maybe he isn't happy about Bucky's lack of progress in therapy, something he thinks is a stupid exercise anyway. How is talking to some woman going to fix his problems? It will just dredge up the shit he doesn't want to think about and probably give her nightmares to boot. Or else he might have been lying about being happy that they'd been kissing. Not that they're doing much more of it now. Everything is pretty much the same between them as it had been before, still sharing a bed, not caring if they see each other changing, and touching limited to the decidedly non-sexual. There could be something he was supposed to remember, too. Some kind of anniversary maybe, a birthday, some routine or tradition of theirs. Is he unhappy that Bucky doesn't have much of his memory back yet? 

Whatever it is, he's pretty sure Natasha knows. This is the third day and she hasn't been by once - he hasn't seen her since before the kissing, actually. He doesn't have any way of asking her if she refuses to visit. He doesn't have a phone like Steve does, and though he's started using the internet a little he doesn't have any of the bits people use to talk to each other, Gmails and Twitters and Facebooks, and he doesn't know if Natasha does either.

At this point he thinks he’d almost be able to make himself ask Steve _himself_ what he did wrong, except that of course he’s gone again, having disappeared right after eating breakfast. 

This damn apartment is too small, _that’s_ the problem. Before they’d come to find Steve, in a mood like this he would have done security sweeps, ever-widening circles around wherever they were camped out, reassuring himself that no one knew they were there, that no one was going to stumble across them who might recognise what was odd about them (which after finding Sam had begun to extend to basically anyone who wasn’t outright blind), that he had measures in place to alert him to anyone’s approach. Here he can’t even see if anyone’s lurking outside the entrance door. He can’t hear breathing if he stands very closely very quietly, but he doesn’t know how much sound the walls let through. They’re relying solely on a security system he hasn’t studied designed by someone he’s barely met and he hadn’t realised until just now how very not okay he is with that or how much he’d relied on the presence of Steve, who could come and go at will and who would be just as conscious of their security as Bucky.

And this _door_... well, apparently it’s really annoying to open from the inside when you don’t have security permissions, that’s all he’ll say about that. For a moment he actually thinks he’s managed it, until he realises that it’s reacting to the presence of someone on the outside, short and unimpressed looking. Stark. Tony, not Howard, he remembers. Howard has been dead for over twenty years now. 

"Dammit, Steve," Stark says, rolling his eyes up to look beseechingly at the ceiling, "you bring home strays, you say you'll feed them and walk them and keep them out of trouble…"

Bucky isn't even sure what Stark is talking about, honestly, but just from the fact that Steve isn't even here he's pretty sure he's supposed to be the stray, and that it's supposed to be insulting. He scowls, tries to remember that Stark is Steve's friend and Steve is his friend and that means that the insults aren't real insults, that this is Stark's territory more than it is his, that he isn't supposed to be defending the place from him. It should be easy - in his *mind* it's easy, it's just that his body is telling him there's an intruder in his, and more to the point _Steve's_ , living space. "If you're not letting me out, go away," he snaps, all bluster and bravado, knowing that he has no standing to be ordering him around at all.

He doesn't realise he's switched out of English again until Stark stares blankly back for a moment. "Is that Russian? I don't speak Russian. JARVIS, you speak Russian, right?"

The computer voice that replies makes Bucky startle a little. "I believe Sergeant Barnes is experiencing cabin fever, sir." He'd known there was a computer in the building, they'd used it to make the tv work. Had he known it could have conversations? He thinks he might have, it seems like familiar knowledge, like something he'd picked up in passing that hadn't been of any use until now.

Stark is frowning at him, looking contemplative in a way that's at least not obviously aggressive, and evidently comes to some sort of decision. "Yeah, okay. Come on then, let's go work off some energy. Where's Wilson, is he coming? Oh, there he is." Sam has been sitting, for the last couple of hours, against the windows, leaning his forehead against the glass to stare out at the sky, and from the doorway Stark has to lean over slightly to get a good look at him. 

Bucky's better at keeping track of him in his peripheral vision. He doesn't need to turn to know that Sammy hasn't moved in response to Stark’s question. To him it's a clear sign that he has no real desire to go anywhere - not unless they're going to go up into the air, maybe, and Bucky is pretty sure that's not the case. "No." He has to concentrate to make sure it comes out in English but Stark doesn't comment, just nods and turns away, walking down the hallway until Bucky realises he's supposed to be following him.

They pass the therapist’s office, sitting open and empty, and take the elevator down-- Bucky doesn’t know how many floors, just _down_ for a few short seconds until the door opens out onto a gym and Stark is leading him towards an open area with mats covering the floor. "JARVIS, suit me," he says, and Bucky has to stand back then because suddenly pieces of armour, red and gold, are flying towards Stark out of a compartment in the wall, snapping into place around his body until there's no sign of him under there at all.

Bucky stares numbly for a minute, vaguely aware that he shouldn't be surprised, this is exactly the sort of thing he should expect from a Stark, but the back of his mind is busy seizing on the image of a car… flying? It was meant to fly. He's certain of it. 

"Well, come on, I don't have all day," Stark is saying, hands up in a basic defensive position before he beckons with one. "I'm not fighting you unprotected, I've seen the scans of that arm."

Fighting. For a moment all he can think is _but I don't want to fight you_ , but then he remembers this is something people do. Rough-housing. Sparring. Just for practice, and in his head he forms a slightly feral grin that he doesn't think quite makes it to his face as his brain prioritises the message for the muscles in his leg and torso to bunch and tighten, to kick out and take Stark by surprise. He'll be expecting a punch, but Bucky tries not to rely solely on the sheer strength of his arm.

It's different, fighting someone all armored up like this. He can't see Stark’s face, the tensing of his body that might telegraph his movements, and hits that would daze or knock down most people have their force absorbed some by the suit. He has to adjust for the hard planes of metal, using his right hand to grab, grapple, strike rather than punch with a closed fist with knuckles vulnerable and skin stretched thin over them. He has the edge in movement though, more flexible and acrobatic, and he quickly shifts his style to use that to his advantage.

It's… _fun_ , actually, and easy to lose himself in it until even he is starting to have to catch his breath in brief pauses between volleys. He isn't entirely sure how long they move like this, back and forth, back and forth, until Stark is holding his arms up in a T and ducking out of the way. "Timeout, timeout. I gotta take this call. Switch to privacy mode."

The last sentence seems not to be intended for Bucky as he ducks his head slightly and starts pacing silently. Privacy mode, Bucky surmises, silences the speakers or something so he can talk without being heard, because the only sound he can hear from him now is so soft and muted he isn't entirely sure he isn't imagining it. Unsure what to do with himself in the sudden break he sinks to the floor, hands pressed against the mat so he can feel the slight spring and the rough texture of the fibres against his palms, different input from the flesh and metal.

"Business calls. JARVIS, make sure Barnes gets back okay." It's abrupt, a complete dismissal, and Bucky gets the sense as Stark enters the elevator still in his armor that his mind has simply switched tracks entirely, that whatever the call was about has pushed ahead of him in the priority queue and now Stark's moved on from him. It's an odd kind of relief. Either he's paying attention to you or he's not, and he doesn't have to make any guesses about what he's thinking. 

The elevator returns, sitting with its doors open until Bucky gets up and obediently enters. He isn't sure whether he's supposed to press a button or say the floor number he wants or something, but while he's looking for a panel, any kind of directions, the doors just slide closed and the carriage starts moving. Okay. Apparently JARVIS really is making sure he gets back. He isn't surprised at all then to find himself deposited back on their floor. "Thanks?" he offers, face scrunching as he stumbles over the etiquette of dealing with smart computers. 

"You're quite welcome, Sergeant Barnes," the disembodied voice replies, seemingly coming from everywhere around him. It's weird.

The door to the apartment opens for him too, and as he starts to walk in his eyes automatically go to where Sammy had been sitting before, only to register half a second later that he's gotten up and is already approaching quickly, his movements tense and jittery. "Stop." He holds a hand up, pressing it to Bucky’s chest so that he’s still standing in the open doorway. In his other hand is a laptop. "Something’s wrong."

"What?"

Sammy shrugs helplessly in a way that has his wings bunching along with the muscles in his shoulders rather than simply adjusting to the movement. "After he asked the computer where you went—" Steve, that must be "—he was reading on his laptop. A few minutes ago the laptop and phone both beeped. He swore and looked at me for two or three seconds, then got his phone out and left."

"Stark got a message too." Probably from Steve. Sammy is holding up the laptop - Steve’s - and he gives it a long, calculating look. A large portion of his brain is screaming at him that they can't go into it, like a big flashing warning sign in his head, but he doesn't like this. Not any of it. If something's going on that affects them - and he's pretty sure it does, he's pretty sure this is about Hydra and maybe those two other assets they were trying to find - they should know, especially if they can help. This is what they were _designed_ for.

He accepts it and flicks it open quickly as though he needs to get it done before he can talk himself out of it, then stares at the screen as it resolves into a password dialog. He should have seen that coming - his has one as well that Steve had helped him set, though all three of them (and probably a few others beyond) know what it is. Well, he knows Steve, right? He can crack this. What would he pick if he was Steve?

It's harder than it might have been otherwise, running through disjointed memories and trying to pick out which ones have the most significance. He isn't even entirely sure they're all real. Some of them feel different than others, fuzzier or more defined, more or less complete, tied to dates or floating unanchored. Resting the laptop on his open left palm, he hovers his right hand over the keyboard a moment before starting to type. Steve's birthday makes the screen flash and the image shake back and forth, and he frowns tightly. What had Steve said when he was setting his? "Something you can remember, but that not everyone would know." Yeah, he guesses everyone _would_ know Steve's birthday.

He tries the address of the place they had together, after Steve's mom died and Bucky moved out of his family home. He sort of remembers saying that he'd wanted his independence but he's pretty sure he just wanted to look after Steve; he isn't sure whether Steve had known what he meant, but he probably had. He was plenty smart even back then.

It's not either of their military ID numbers either, and after trying them he stops to think again, not sure whether there's a limit on how many times he can do this before he gets locked out or whether the building computer is going to tell on him again like it did when he was messing with the door. He doesn't think it'd be anything to do with a girl, except for maybe that dame Carter Steve had met in the Army. He doesn't try that yet though. He wants to be really sure he has it right, first. Something meaningful, but not obvious. Something he would have chosen a couple of years ago when the future was still pretty new to him. It's got to be something from the past.

Cautiously, he types in the date Steve had met Dr Erskine, the day they'd let him into the Army, then hesitates. That's the right date, isn't it? July 14. He wishes the screen would show what he'd actually typed instead of those little black circles, he wants to look at it, try and decide if it looks right. Instead he closes his eyes, trying to think.

It had been _before_ his birthday. Not July, June.

Even that's got to be in the records though. It's meaningful alright, but too obvious. And besides, it hadn't been that day that mattered really. It had been later during training, the day they'd really decided to give him the serum after he'd thrown himself on a grenade. He remembers Steve telling the story again later, not highlighting his bravery - in retrospect he'd thought he was pretty dumb to think the grenade was even real - just because it was how he finally got what he'd wanted.

He holds down the delete key with his thumb until the circles are all gone, then re-types the password. This time the box is replaced by the spinning cursor as the computer processes the request and loads the windows that had been left open. On top of them is Steve's email, the most recent one of which looks like some kind of advertisement, but below that is one from Natasha with several files attached. They look like incident reports for a series of murders, similar in many ways to the ones that would have been written about his missions, and as he scans through them he frowns, seeing the pattern beginning to form. "Did those files say where your parents live?"

Sammy is silent for a long moment, and when Bucky glances up he looks stricken, knowing there's only one reason the question would be relevant. "My mom and sister. In Harlem."

"We gotta go there." Because the last three attacks have been on private residences through New England and the only thing they had in common was a victim named Darlene Wilson. He’s gonna guess that if Steve and Stark both left the building abruptly they had a pretty good reason.

The elevator won’t re-open for them, and Bucky takes half a moment to be glad of Sammy’s foresight in at least keeping the apartment door open before turning back down the hallway. He’s spent enough time not doing anything in the therapist’s office to know the windows in there open. Levers limit it to about six inches, but it’s the work of seconds to pull those off and push the window out as far as it will go. It’s a long way to the ground. He has a flash of Steve’s face that comes all mixed up with the sensation of falling. He doesn’t realise he’s freezed up until he feels Sammy’s hand on his back.

"We’ll have to drop until I can get my wings open." He sounds ever-so-slightly doubtful and Bucky looks down again, trying to calculate how long it would take to hit the ground. They’ll have plenty of time, he decides to decide.

Only when he gives a shaky nod does Sammy step in closer, wrapping his arms around Bucky’s chest from behind and bracing a foot on the bottom edge of the window frame. It takes a few awkward seconds to clambour up, and then he feels Sammy inhale sharply behind his ear and squeeze tighter for a moment before they start to plummet.


	6. Chapter 6 / Epilogue

Being in the air again feels _amazing_. If there was time, Sam doesn't think he'd be able to stop himself from fooling around, finding a thermal to rise up up into the sky on, folding in his wings to hurtle down, do barrel rolls, slalom between skyscrapers. It's still tempting, he can practically taste the freedom, but the weight of what they'd found on Steve's laptop sits like an anvil at the back of his mind (like Bucky's weight in his arms, on his shoulders) and instead the most exciting thing he gets to do is wide loops as he tries to figure out how to get to Harlem from here. Everything looks different from the air. "East!" Bucky reminds him, half the volume being lost into the wind even though his mouth is bare inches from Sam's ear, but it helps to orientate him enough to get going the right way. After that he starts to recognise a few landmarks, but it's a spotty process that sometimes has him looking for the next one only to realise it's turned into something else when he finds himself further along than he should be. It doesn't help that he's never flown into Harlem before. For all that the wings feel normal - adjusting minutely to the air flow over and under them, shifts he doesn't even have to really think about and barely notices even after they're already made - he does remember that he didn't always have them. In his old life, he'd walked. It had been much slower.

He's not even sure what they're supposed to be looking for. He'd been hoping for something obvious, superheros clashing in the skies, but so far there's no sign of a fight at all. He has to head down lower, practically skimming the tops of the buildings so they can get a view of what's happening on the streets. It would be better if it were night - they'd still be visible, but not as outright conspicuous as he _feels_.

Soon enough he finds himself taking turns without really knowing why. It's just crystallising in his mind that he actually _knows where he is_ when Bucky whacks lightly at his arm to get his attention and then points down towards Steve. He's in a darker version of his famous uniform, standing in a doorway and staring down the street, shield on his back and hand to one ear as he speaks over a comm.

"Oh, hell," Sam hears him say as he dives down to land neatly next to him, letting Bucky go.

"You need a new password, pal," Bucky announces, stretching his muscles out a bit. "Turns out I remember a lot about you."

There are a lot of things that Sam should ask, chief among them being _what the hell is going on_? They crowd up in his head, clamouring for attention, half a dozen of them each grabbing at his vocal cords so that none of them can actually get out.

He _hates_ when this happens.

Instead he's reduced to staring at Steve silently in a way that he hopes accurately conveys everything he needs it to, wrapping his arms around his own body as though he can replicate the feeling of Bucky pressed up against him. Steve looks exasperated for a moment, but it must work because after that he sighs and decides he might as well explain. "We think they're trying to draw you out. Tony and Rhodes are checking other locations, and Clint and I are keeping an eye on things here. It's handled."

Not even close, in Sam's opinion. Two people? They can't possibly cover all the approaches between them. He doesn't even know who Clint _is_ , but Steve's just a guy. A really fit strong guy with a shield, but he's designed to lead soldiers into battle, not… this. He's too conspicuous. He's lucky he's not already being swarmed by bystanders.

"Who's Clint?" Bucky demands, shooting Sam merely the barest flicker of a glance to confirm that he's okay with him doing the talking for the moment.

"Hawkeye," Steve explains, then, "He works with Natasha sometimes. He's good."

"Well, why isn't Natasha here?"

"She's still in Boston." He sounds like he's trying to be reasonable, but it's pretty clear to Sam that he's losing his patience, his attention gradually moving from 'keeping an eye on things' to 'arguing with Bucky'. He tightens his arms, taking an uncertain step backwards and looking down the street towards where the mostly-familiar building where he grew up is, trying to assess where Hawkeye might be positioned, where Wolf and Wind might be coming from, while the others keep arguing. 

Steve finally snaps, "He can speak for himself!"

" _Not always._ " Bucky actually throws his hands up in frustration, both of them, and Sam feels stuck in place, wanting to just leave them and close in on the building to be protected himself except for the probability of being seen by someone who knows him. He hasn't felt ready to even think about it before now, still doesn't, but the situation doesn't give him room to leave any more than it does to approach. He squeezes his eyes closed, trying to filter out the sound of their argument, fighting the automatic urge to just wrap himself up in his wings that's far more appropriate when they're in the near-empty apartment than out in public like this. He already draws too much attention from most angles, he might as well try to look normal from a few.

His ears are ringing, he realises, and when he drags his eyes open Bucky and Steve have stopped arguing because Bucky and Steve are lying on the ground like a couple of marionettes whose strings have been cut, sudden and silent.

Well. Not silent. He can still hear that ringing, and when he looks around it's easy to see where it's coming from because he's the only other person on this block still standing.

 _They_ are. A second one lopes around the corner, and the sense of familiarity that seizes at Sam's gut is so strong he finds himself swaying on his feet.

Wind doesn't even look so out of place here. He's the most normal-looking of the three of them, anyway, some kind of non-descript brown that could be mistaken for a half dozen different ethnicities depending on context clues and priming. Sam has a feeling they're both Iraqi, Afghani, something like that. Wind's mouth is open in a scream (there's a painting like that, Sam remembers), and when he closes it everything goes quiet and a moment later Bucky and Steve are stirring, struggling to get to their feet.

Sam isn't looking at them. He's keeping his eyes on Wolf instead. Unlike Wind, he'd stand out anywhere, face gruesomely distended so that his massive jaws jut out and his lips are forced to roll back into the aspect of a snarl. His hair grows in strangely, patchy, around the places where his head has been reshaped.

Without really thinking about it he lets his wings flare up, launching him a few feet into the air and beating hard to carry him over to them, ignoring Bucky's "—Sammy!"

They're all silent for a moment. It's only to be expected from Wolf of course, who can only produce mangled, incomprehensible sounds. Understandable from Wind, too. "You must return," he says finally, his voice a whispery thing with a slight screech to it that would have anyone else struggling to stay on their feet. Sam doesn't know what Hydra did to protect him and Wolf from it, only seen the fancy little plugs they put in their own ears.

"I can't." Though actually he could - there's no one here who could stop him from simply flying away. He doesn't know where there are any Hydra bases in the US, but the other two must have somewhere to go back to. "I don't— I don't _want_ to."

Wind stares at him uncomprehendingly and Sam pretty much knows how he feels because it's not something he tries to even think very often, let alone say. This isn't like wanting more food or to watch tv, either. It's not even like wanting Bucky, really. It's bigger than that, almost dizzying, because for all that he's been away from Hydra for weeks now he hasn't actually had a chance, to choose, to _want_ to leave. That wasn't anything like what he'd been thinking when Bucky had burst into the base and he'd seen his arm and immediately turned on the handlers. He remembers attacking handlers before, remembers being punished for it. It hadn't ever meant anything… bigger.

Given Sam's the most prolific talker out of all of them and even he can go entire missions without saying a word it's hardly a shock that Wind doesn't give a verbal reply. He knows what he means anyway, but it makes it easier to act like they're not in the middle of a battle of wills, that Wolf isn't clearly angry at him for the transgression, and turn his back, start walking back towards where Steve has his hand on Bucky's arm - holding him back, but evidently not holding _on_ , if the ease with which he breaks away is any indication.

Some instinct or half-formed memory makes him spin back around, wings flaring out to full extension, knowing even before he looks that Wolf is coming up behind him with his strange double-jointed stride. They pull up barely two feet apart, staring each other down intently, and it should be intimidating to be so close to that twisted face. It is, partly, but only in the part of Sam's brain that's busy with risk assessment. Respect for the capability of those teeth, rather than the dread fear of someone who had never fought on the same side as him, never trusted him.

He can't _remember_ much of what they've done together, but his lack of revulsion and horror is proof enough that it happened.

There's little point in speaking. Instead they communicate through threatening little muscle twitches, rapidly-aborted moves that could have become attacks if they'd lasted for longer than a microsecond. This close to each other, chances are strong that Wolf would be able to get a grip with those powerful jaws before Sam could fly backwards or bring his wings around to either guard or slice, but he's banking on the idea that neither of them actually _want_ to make a serious go of it. That might change when Bucky gets too close though. He can hear him still approaching, and the way it makes Sam's lungs tighten and tighten means it's almost a relief when Wind screams again.

Behind him Bucky makes a sound like he's been punched in the gut. He sees the moment Wolf's attention shifts and throws his arm up.

Wolf charges him anyway, aiming for his arm, his wing, to knock past him. If it's chicken they're playing, Sam loses, something he realises half a second later when Wolf's teeth tear into his arm with a wet crunch. The pain almost drops him, but he manages to muster enough sense to push down with his wings, lifting the both of them off the ground even as Wolf starts to shake his head like a terrier. His weight makes Sam scream but doesn't stop him from rising further, just slowly enough for Wolf to see what's coming, calculate the risks, and let go. 

He drops neatly to all fours, face slick and red with Sam's blood and more dripping from the wound in his arm, the colour looking strange as Sam's vision swims. Probably he could leap up and still reach him, pull him down by the ankle, but Sam was never his real target and now that he's out of the way the path to where Bucky lies is clear.

His dive only makes the black spots floating in front of his eyes worse, so that he feels more than sees when he reaches Bucky, grabbing him up in the hand of his uninjured arm. But when he tries to summon the strength to lift up again he fails, managing only to drag them both sideways for a few yards before he drops the last couple of feet to the ground. His wing hits the concrete at a strange angle and the impact shudders through his body, knocking the air out of his lungs. For several seconds he forgets how to breathe.

Three things strike him simultaneously, then. He can no longer hear Wind's shriek. He _can_ hear running footsteps, charging towards him from the other direction. From Wolf, there's nothing.

It takes him a few more seconds to turn his head back, and longer to blink through the dark spots until his vision is clear enough to make anything out. When he does, it doesn't make much sense. Both of them are down and unmoving. Wind is too far for details, but there are two arrow shafts protruding from the area of Wolf's neck.

Arrows?

It's too hard to bring himself to care about where they came from. The pain is fading in and out like his heartbeat, and he passes out to the sound of Steve swearing somewhere nearby.

 

EPILOGUE

Bucky's pretty sure he's supposed to like Clint, or be grateful, or feel some kind of positive towards him, but the way he sees it it was basically an accident that they put a deaf sniper to guard the Wilson's house. All he really did was take out his hearing aids and shoot a few arrows. It hardly makes him a tactical genius and it definitely doesn't explain why he's suddenly _always around_ when they'd never even heard of him until two seconds ago. It had been Steve's suggestion, on account of Sammy's distrust of medical shit, to bring a hospital bed to the apartment instead of putting him in the building's medical wing (and why whatever Stark Industries is now has a full medical wing in their skyscraper Bucky doesn't even know), and it's a good idea, but it does mean the place has a tendency to get crowded. It leaves him stalking through the rooms casting baleful looks at the nurses doing check-ups, or Dr Scott, or Clint, or Tony the couple of times he stops in, or sometimes even Steve if he's in a bad enough mood.

He doesn't like seeing Sammy like this, anyway, even if his colour is a bit better now. For a little while there he'd never thought a black guy could _look_ so obviously wrongly pale, and it's hard to know how long it should take for something like that to heal. Bone splintered and broken in several places, muscles and flesh shredded, lost blood, he's got hazy recollections of injuries that bad from working in machine shops before the war, but medicine's better now and they've got the serum besides. But no matter how hard he tries he can't really remember recovering from anything while he was with Hydra, and he _knows_ he got pretty badly injured a whole lot, so he's pretty sure they mostly just froze them and let it heal while they were unconscious.

Seeing as how they're still struggling to find any painkillers or sedatives that work right without him building up a tolerance, he can kind of see the logic in it. It's fine though. Half the time Clint's around to distract him with stories about his kids, usually things he's already said because Sammy's been barely coherent enough to remember them, like Bucky couldn't do that perfectly well himself.

"You're all pouty," Sammy accuses him on the third day, poking awkwardly at his forehead where it wrinkles between his eyes with his left hand. It's hard to tell whether the glaze over his eyes is from pain or drugs; Bucky's lost track of which one they're trying at the moment, but he seems a lot more awake than he has been.

"Yeah, coz you almost got your arm _bit off_."

"I think that's why _I'm_ meant to be pouty." His words are a little slurred and he nestles the side of his face into the pillow to look up at him. From his expression Bucky suspects he might also be thinking something about his two old assassin buddies getting shot in front of him. Or turning on him. Maybe both. It's kind of hard to tell what his position on that is so far, with the being out of it a lot.

Steve can't see his face from where he's sitting on the sofa with a sketchpad though, so his brief laugh is definitely just about the words. "You're both pouty. And kinda bad at this, for a pair of such lookers who you'd think would have more practice." He sets his sketchpad on the coffee table, wanders over to sit in the chair on the other side of the bed. He's got the view of the outside there - Bucky always makes sure to sit between the bed and window, so Sammy can see out when he's looking at him and he's got sightlines all through the living room. "He's jealous," Steve tells Sammy, "even though he's got no reason, with Clint."

Bucky's got just enough time to see Sammy start to frown before he has to look away, face hot and gut squirming at the suggestion. Jealousy is for when you want to possess something. To own it. When you think you've got a right to it, which he absolutely doesn't. He can't— It's just, you get used to a guy being around, to relying on each other, whether that's for knocking over Hydra bases in a cross-continental revenge spree or for realising you don't know how to fix all the broken bits yourself or for curling against each other at night because you need some kind of anchor against the dreams. Then one moment he's looking fucking beautiful with his wings spread out standing in between Bucky and something that seems more animal than human and the next there's blood everywhere and someone else to protect him, someone else showing him pictures that make him smile all soft and he doesn't know how Steve can be so _casual_ about it.

There's something like four seconds of agonising silence before Sammy says loftily, "Well that's dumb as hell."

He still can't look, he can't, the words are ambiguous like maybe he means this is something he shouldn't even be hoping for but from the tone of his voice he thinks, maybe. It's overwhelming, the idea that Sammy might want it too, that kissing each other could happen again, and again.

He thinks Steve must notice his distress because he takes a breath and changes the subject. It's not a great one, but he can't help but be a bit relieved anyway.

"There's been a bit of news coverage." His voice is carefully neutral. "No really good pictures though. No one's identified either of you or made a connection to your family."

It's only when he says it that Bucky realises it's not something he'd even thought about. He's… well, he's pretty aware that basically everyone he knows is either dead or close to it. Maybe he's got some nieces or nephews, or kids of theirs, but he'd already looked up his sisters and the few cousins whose names he could remember when he was in the wind after dragging Steve out of the Potomac, trying to figure out who the fuck Bucky Barnes was, so he knows there aren't any relatives left that would be old enough to actually remember him. For some reason even though he knows the same isn't true for Sammy he hasn't been thinking about it in those terms, that there are still people who _know_ him. Knew him. Mother, sister, the terms… didn't have much emotional weight to them, not enough to comprehend them as real people with their own agency who might recognise their son and brother in a picture or news reel. Casting a glance sideways he can see that it hadn't occurred to Sammy either, though that might be more because he's been a little preoccupied.

"Anyway, Tony said he'll keep monitoring it, and Natasha's dropping hints about dealing with the Hydra end of things," Steve finishes. He eyes Sam, the way he's frowning slightly as though concentrating hard, and cracks a smile. "I was waiting until you were likely to remember, but I feel like I still might have to repeat it a few times."

"Rude," Sammy mumbles. It's just out of his usual 'around company' character enough to make Bucky snort in amusement, and Steve looks like he's trying to hold back some more laughter of his own. It earns them a sulky little glare. "Y'all ganging up on me now. And you're meant to be a role model." That last bit _has_ to be directed at Steve.

"Damn, you're snarky like this." He sounds a little wondering, a little impressed, and Bucky wants to be like, " _See?_ ", like Steve finally understands what he's been saying, why he likes him so much.

Sammy's arm is healing enough to get them through a couple rounds of cards, mostly using it just to steady his hand, and after that they put the tv on until his next dose has him drifting off. It's nice. Real nice. For a few minutes both of them sit quietly sneaking glances at him sleeping, but Bucky can _feel_ the difference when Steve's attention shifts to him.

He's pretty sure he knows what's coming. They haven't talked about it yet, but Steve opened the door when he brought up the news coverage. Just in case he's wrong, though, he doesn't want to be the one to bring it up. "What?" he asks instead, the word short and a bit unwelcoming.

"Are you going to tell him?"

Bucky turns to give him a steady look, wondering if he has an opinion on the matter. If he does (he probably does), he's not giving anything away by his expression. "Not like it matters." He glances down, making doubly sure that the rhythm of Sammy's breathing indicates drug-assisted sleep. He doesn't need to be overhearing this. "They're dead. Who killed 'em doesn't make a difference." Somehow he manages to keep his voice steady and dismissive like it really doesn't matter to him. It's not like Sammy hasn't seen him kill people before. Hell, he'd helped with a bunch of them. Just… it is different, who they are. Killing Hydra agents, people who'd signed up for it, isn't like killing civilians, and it isn't like killing other assets. 

Maybe. Or maybe they crossed over into the agent category when they decided to make things violent. He isn't really sure _himself_ on that part. All he knows is he'd do it again. Wolf had looked like he'd probably bleed out in a few minutes anyway even with the serum, but maybe Wind would have made it, and nothing good could have come from that. Someone would have wanted to use him. He's confident between the three of them that they can keep him and Sammy out of that business, but he's got limits.

So, yeah, he thinks he did the right thing. But he still guesses Stevie isn't entirely wrong in questioning it. Or at least in questioning how Sammy might see it.

One of his wings has shifted a little and looks like it's gonna be bordering on awkward soon, and he carefully smooths it back into place, taking a moment to make sure he's going to be comfortable. When he looks back up, Steve has a soft expression on his face that's achingly familiar, something from back in the old days when it was just them against the world. It tightens something in his chest, something that makes him think, yes. Coming to Steve was the right decision.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> DONE. After only three or four big re-writes - the original plot was very, very different.
> 
> As I mentioned I'm being very ambitious and hoping for this to be a trilogy. The second, shorter, one is basically done and I've started #3. I still need to firm up the exact plot trajectory a bit but I'm pretty certain it will involve Sam's family, more Tony, a lot of publicity and hopefully some of the themes from Civil War.
> 
> (Also, I know, I'm really bad at replying to comments. I'm easily intimidated by conversation with strangers. >.>)


End file.
